But heavy rain in Beijing has left the pitch totally unplayable, with Manchester United revealing on Twitter that “tournament organisers and participating clubs have made a decision to cancel” the encounter.
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United landed in Beijing late yesterday, after their flight from Shanghai had to be diverted to Tianjin due to bad weather.
The surface at the Birds Nest stadium in Beijing was described as “bad” by United boss Jose Mourinho on Sunday.
“We know the conditions, but we have to play”.
United executive vice chairman Woodward said: “It’s extremely disappointing not to be able to play the game in this wonderful stadium but the recent torrential rain would have caused problems anywhere in the world and has left the pitch unplayable”. “Maybe with these conditions it’s a double friendly”.
“It is nearly the end and we can go home and train in conditions where the players are safe”, said Mourinho after a wild couple of days for his squad after they lost 1-4 to Borussia Dortmund in Shanghai on Friday.
“Conditions of my players are more important than the result in pre-season.so if you ask me the objective for tomorrow, I have only one – take the players home safe without any kind of injures”.
The game was set to kick off at the Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing at 12.30pm.
Jose Mourinho also described how poor the playing field truly is right now.
The 53-year-old added that the outcome of the match is not his concern as long as his players come through without injury and get on the first plane back home to England.
“They then arrived at the hotel for dinner at 1am”.
Mourinho admitted he can not wait to get back to Manchester and begin training with his full complement of players.
It is fair to say that Manchester United’s summer tour of China could have gone better.
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“Manchester City have all of their players, we have six, seven or eight, who played in the Euros. What I want is to get back to Manchester and train with the full group”.
