It is a luxury the players are not afforded in Asia, where they can barely walk down a hotel corridor without an army of autograph hunters swarming on them.

The scenes on Wednesday morning in Function Room 4 of the Kerry Hotel in the Pudong district of Shanghai, where United are staying on the first leg of their eight-day tour of China, typified the hysteria that takes hold whenever United are in town.

After a long, rambling and occasionally awkward press conference when Wayne Rooney, Ander Herrera and new signing Henrikh Mkhitaryan had to field some peculiar questions as part of the commercial launch of the club’s new three-year global partnership with Gulf Oil International, the trio had to be hurriedly escorted from the room by three concerned United security staff as an expanding scrum of eager supporters, media and VIPs scrambled for photographs with the mobbed players.

Rooney asked his favourite Chinese food

There was the odd toe-curling moment in the question and answer session that had preceded the sudden dart for the exit doors. Denis Irwin, the former United left-back who made 529 appearances for the club, was asked if he had ever seen Rooney before. Rooney had to repeat three times that his favourite Chinese food was Foo Yung as his inquisitor struggled to understand his Liverpudlian tones. And, at the end, Rooney, Herrera and Mkhitaryan were asked to stand up in front of the large assembled crowd and each bid “Zaijian” – goodbye – to those present. Kudos, though, to Mkhitaryan for cleverley side-stepping a question for the panel on ways Chinese football could be improved and developed. As the question was being asked, the Armenian midfielder – newly arrived from Borussia Dortmund – slipped the microphone to an unsuspecting Herrera.

From Russia with Love

It is unclear if the United squad have been keeping up-to-date with developments surrounding Russia’s state-sponsored Olympic doping scandal but there were some interesting choices of films to watch aboard their Russian-owned Aeroflot Airbus A330 charter flight to Shanghai. One – ‘The Champions: Faster. Higher. Stronger’ – was a Russian film released this year about three ordinary people who became Olympic champions and the pride of their country. That film was given a wide berth by most. Alternatively, there was a large selection of James Bond movies, including cold war thriller From Russia With Love, and another clutch of 007 classics featuring hackneyed Russian villains.

Investing in China

China Media Capital bought a 13 per cent stake in the City Football Group, who own Manchester City, for around £265 million last year and there was a degree of inevitability about Jamie Reigle, United’s commercial director, being asked whether the red half of Manchester had any of its own investment strategies in the pipeline as far as China was concerned in the coming years. Reigle would not give much away but said United’s emphasis, for now, would be on providing experience to help the continuing growth of China’s sporting infrastructure, not least coaching and youth development. United have a permanent coach based in Hong Kong working in conjunction with 27 schools and Reigle said there may be a “great opportunity to do something similar in China” in the future.

Passport problems

United are on an extremely tight schedule in China with a flurry of commercial and dinner engagements as well as media activity and the International Champions Cup matches against Borussia Dortmund, in Shanghai on Friday, and Manchester City in Beijing on Monday. It didn’t help, then, that the squad were delayed by two hours as a result of problems at passport control on arrival at Shanghai Airport. Ed Woodward, the United executive vice-chairman, did not travel with the team but will join up with the squad on the second leg of the tour in Beijing. Securing Mourinho’s fourth – and main – transfer target, Paul Pogba, is Woodward’s immediate priority with United in pole position to sign the Juventus and France midfielder.