A 6am corridor encounter with the Manchester United boss is enough to wake any weary traveller, rising on their first morning in the USA for pre-season tour.
Ruben Amorim embraces the early start, as he explained in the lift, ready to seize every minute of the slightly cooler morning conditions in Chicago to get his team ticking.
With storms expected in the coming days, the humidity means camera lenses and glasses steam up as soon as you leave an air-conditioned room and head outside.
Ruben, who said he was well-refreshed from the short summer break, dipped out of the lift to head to a coaches’ meeting over breakfast. There are conversations to be had about how to manage load and which tactical instruction should be conducted on the pitch, and which should be done in video analysis sessions.
After a physically intense Wednesday session at Chicago Fire’s training ground - beautifully backdropped by a cloud-tickling skyline - this second day required intensity of the mind.
Chatting before the players came out, Ruben and Adelio Candido - first-team coach - explained how this would be a calmer morning. After stretching and a competitive two-touch warm-up, Carlos Fernandes allocated each player their position and Ruben ran through in detail a specific pattern of defensive play.
Passing drills and more games of two-touch closed out training, but the players, as has become regular so far in pre-season, stayed out for more. During a water break, Matheus Cunha chatted to Bryan Mbeumo in French, helping his fellow new signing to settle in.
Meanwhile, Ruben caught up with the Chicago Fire assistant coach, who he went to school with in Lisbon many years ago.
These are the connections that Tour facilitates, both within and outside of the group. The young players who have earned their spot are loving it, learning off the senior players and training hard, but also having their eyes opened to the world.
There are plenty of exciting trips for Academy players, including an extraordinary annual exchange with the Hong Kong Jockey Club, but this is a new city for most, and another level.
“I can’t believe how big it is here,”
commented one.
As all new signings and all young players realise on these tours, United’s pull is global.
With that, of course, comes certain commercial responsibilities, to which a small portion of the afternoon was dedicated. The planning for these tours stretches back many months, and involves the football staff who determine the appropriate timing and level of commercial and media engagements.
Once the players freshened up, they headed to different places in the hotel or across the city, coming across some fans waiting outside the hotel in the meantime, which, as usual in these cases, drew Beatles-esque mania.
A group of six headed to the adidas store in Chicago to meet fans who’d been queuing since 9am, thankfully far removed from the brewing storm which emptied its load in mid-afternoon to leave a crisper, sun-filled evening. There were plenty of photos, handshakes and wishes of good luck. And many smiles on faces, to quote the old United song. That is, after all, what underlies everything in this game we love: the ability of these talented players to put smiles on faces.
On Friday, the Reds train at Chicago’s Soldier Field stadium — where we play next Wednesday — live on MUTV, before flying to New Jersey ahead of Saturday’s opening game of the Premier League Summer Series against West Ham.