 |
United played games in Los Angeles, Denver, Washington, Detroit and Miami last year but have scaled back the travelling and will be based predominantly on the west coast this time. They will stay mainly near Seattle and San Francisco as they train and play four matches in the International Champions Cup.
Van Gaal told MUTV: “When you see our pre-season last year in the United States of America, we won everything playing against big, top clubs, and then we had to play our first match against Swansea City and we lost. That cannot happen next year.
“The most important aspect is building up our team with individual players so they are thinking like a team, but also we need fitness and match rhythm and therefore we have to play matches, but we also have to train. The problem was when we went to America we didn’t have so many times to train because we had to fly and travel a lot.
“Now though, we have improved our America tour because we have two basecamps and we are at the other side of America so we have lower temperatures and can build up our fitness better. Last year we had a lot of time differences. You cannot then train your body properly. Therefore it was not good.
“Now we are always in the same basecamps so we have no time difference and we have chosen our hotel nearby the training accommodation. So it is now more easy to train twice a day and that is very important in pre-season.”
United face Club America in Seattle on 17 July, San Jose Earthquakes in Berkeley on 21 July and then Barcelona in Santa Clara four days later. They then play Paris Saint-Germain in Chicago on 29 July before heading home.
