Chapter 5: Going to China

Wayne Rooney's departure caused stir in the media and fandom, and it was soon confirmed that Manchester United and Everton would return to Everton as soon as the transfer window opened.

United's pre-season training continues as planned, with the Reds continuing to play in the International Champions Cup this season, albeit in a move from North America to East Asia and to China.

According to the schedule, Manchester United will play two games in China, facing Borussia Dortmund at the Shanghai Stadium on July 22 and Manchester City at the Bird's Nest on July 25.

As the pace of pre-season gets closer and closer, the atmosphere of the new season is starting to get stronger.

There is a lot of news about transfers in the media every day, and for the players, it seems that it is not easy to say hello when there are no transfer rumors.

Manchester United's performances this season can be described as epic, so many of the players in the Manchester United squad seem to have been in the transfer news by the media.

For example, the Sun reported that Herrera was attracted to Barcelona, and then Barcelona's royal media Le Monde Sport began to follow up, declaring that Herrera had long been eager to join Barcelona, and that Barcelona was full of attraction to Herrera.

The news seemed to get Barcelona fans excited quickly, but Herrera said in an interview with the media that he still has three years left on his contract with Manchester United and that he has no intention of leaving the club.

The news from Madrid seems to be even more exciting, with Marca claiming that Real Madrid are interested in bringing back Di Maria to replace Wales star Gareth Bale, who has suffered frequent injuries to the soleus muscle and is trending towards a glass man. Real Madrid want Manchester United to trade Di Maria for Bale.

It's just that Real Madrid's hopes are obviously unrealistic, and despite the difference in the technical characteristics of the two, Ancelotti does not want to bring in a star of Bale's type. There has been little response from Manchester United to such rumours.

Soon, however, even more exciting news came from Madrid.

"As" newspaper vowed in the report that Raiola and Florentino had secret contacts to discuss the operation of Li Qingshan to Real Madrid in this summer transfer window, just like Real Madrid forced Ronaldo from Manchester United's squad back then.

When the news broke, Manchester United immediately became vigilant.

Carlo Ancelotti first approached the club's hierarchy and was relieved only after getting an answer from Edward Wood.

To be honest, if there is no Li Qingshan in this lineup, Manchester United's attack power will definitely drop by more than half, let alone compete for the championship at that time, and the possibility of fighting for the fourth is greater.

Edwardwood then called Raiola personally, and Raiola swore that he had absolutely no private contact with Real Madrid's personnel, nor did he talk to any club about Li Qingshan.

Many Manchester United fans are also nervous about it.

Just like Cristiano Ronaldo, Manchester United fans at the time thought that United would win a glorious period, and that Manchester United with Ronaldo at the core would remain strong for a long time.

But Real Madrid's transfer maneuver pulled out his teeth and poached Cristiano Ronaldo from Old Trafford to the Bernabeu.

After a painful injury, Manchester United fans are of course a cup bow snake, and they flocked to the club's official social media account to leave messages, hoping that the team will never sell Li Qingshan.

Manchester United also reacted quite quickly, and as soon as the transfer rumors appeared, they released the news on Twitter, Facebook, Weibo and other official accounts of Manchester United.

"Li Qingshan is our core player, we will not now, we will not in the future, and we will not sell him in the future! Manchester United fans love Li Qingshan, and Li Qingshan also loves Manchester United! ”

In order to stabilize the mood of the fans, Li Qingshan also posted a blog post on his Weibo, which actually has one line of words: "GloryGloryManUnited"

I have to say that Manchester United's operation team is still quite professional and fast.

None of that affected United's players at Carrington.

On 15 July, Manchester United played a friendly match with Championship side Wigan Athletic.

The main purpose of this game is that Carlo Ancelotti wants to take a second look at some of the fringe and young players in order to determine the squad for the new season as soon as possible.

Sure enough, in this game, Ancelotti did not start a single start.

In the warm-up game, United fielded a combination of fringe and young players and eventually won 2-0 against Wigan Athletic thanks to goals from youngsters Willian Keane and Andreas Pereira.

After this game, Ancelotti roughly confirmed his lineup for the new season.

In the transfer market, Ancelotti gave Sandezi a few options and then left it alone.

In fact, Ancelotti can't manage it if he wants to, because since Ferguson's retirement, Manchester United's senior management has taken back the right to recruit from the manager, and several managers of Manchester United after that have only the right to suggest on the issue of recruitment.

This is also the trend in the development of modern football clubs.

In the past, the head coach of an England team was more of a manager than a manager.

In addition to managing the first-team players, technical and tactical training, and directing the game, including the echelon, the academy, the management of the team, the recruitment and even the salary of the players are all managed by the head coach, and the head coach of England has extremely great power in the club, which has also created a godfather-level manager like Ferguson and Wenger.

However, the trend in modern football is that the division of labor is becoming more and more clear, and in most teams on the European continent, the head coach is only responsible for the management of the first team, team training, and directing the game, as for the youth academy, recruitment negotiations, etc., there is a special team to manage.

Many teams in England are now learning from this management model, and Manchester United is no exception.

After playing a warm-up against Wigan Athletic, Carlo Ancelotti announced his squad for China.

When the squad was announced, it became clear which players would not be part of Carlo Ancelotti's plans.

Players such as Nani, returning penny Hernandez on loan, and Dutch player Blind are not on the list.

Carlo Ancelotti does not want to keep a large squad, and if this season's signings go well, then Manchester United will improve on the original squad, and even if the signings don't go well, the rest of the squad is actually not bad.

The age structure of the main squad is very reasonable, most of them are players in their playing years, and there are some players with individual characteristics in the bench lineup, as well as some young players with potential.

On 17 July, the Manchester United squad boarded a flight to Shanghai at Manchester Airport to travel to China to complete their pre-season series of warm-up matches, which is also the club's gold-making journey....