FC United of Manchester players and fans, celebrating winning the North West Counties League, now have something else to celebrate - playing in Asia. Photograph: Christopher Thomond
The supporters-run FC United of Manchester are playing in South Korea in the same week as the Premier League champions
In the huge Homeplus supermarket inside Seoul's World Cup stadium, a middle-aged woman pays for her shopping with a Manchester United credit card, one of 1.2m such pieces of plastic in South Korea. The woman is one of an estimated six million Red Devils in the Land of the Morning Calm which is why, on 24 July, the Premier League champions will be in action just a few dozen feet away against FC Seoul in the third of four matches of their 2009 Asian tour.
It is a 64,000 sell-out with 20,000 tickets being snapped up inside the first hour. This is United's fifth such tour in the past decade. For Asian fans, seeing the team these days is not unusual. But on 18 July, another Manchester team has a friendly in South Korea. FC United of Manchester are playing the third division club Bucheon 1995. The prospect is an intriguing one.
For FC United, formed in 2005 after the Malcolm Glazer takeover by disaffected Manchester United fans and now playing in the seventh-tier mouthful that is the Northern Premier League Premier Division, pre-season Asian exhibitions are the kinds of things that Glazer would approve of. But FC United deny that the match with fellow fan-operated team Bucheon 1995 is like "Big United's" tour.
"I think the reasons for our respective trips are a little different," the FC United spokesman, Julian Spencer, said. "Most clubs visit the far east to 'promote the brand', they are trips exclusively designed to make money. We want to show that this 'model' of how to structure a football club has worldwide merit. Also we want to give our players an opportunity of a lifetime to play overseas in front of what we hope will be a large, noisy, passionate local support."
It should be that, as long as Korea's rainy season, currently in full flow, doesn't put a dampener on proceedings. Bucheon, with players named Park Ji-sung and Kaka, look good on paper and the 20-25,000 fans should certainly sound good. And while it may not be broadcast on primetime network television like the other match, it has been widely promoted and FC United's match will be shown live on one of the country's biggest sports cable networks and on outdoor screens in nearby Seoul.
The Red Rebels have come a long way from setting up their club amid the feeling that Manchester United were being taken away from their traditional fanbase. It was not just a feeling among Bucheon supporters – it was a cold, hard fact. The Koreans woke up one morning in February 2006 to find that their club had been relocated overnight. Then, top-flight SK Bucheon FC were preparing for another season when SK Energy, the oil-arm of SK, one of South Korea's largest conglomerates and one of a number of businesses to own Korean teams, suddenly moved the team 300 miles south to the island of Jeju to occupy the last vacant 2002 World Cup stadium.
"When SK did that, we felt that our family had abandoned us. We couldn't believe it," said Bucheon 1995's unpaid marketing manager, Shin Dong-min. In response, Bucheon fans formed their own team and are now in South Korea's third tier – the K3 league. It has taken money to do so, much of which came from a sponsorship deal with SK Telecom. The same company is also footing the bill for this friendly, although Bucheon had to compete against other parties for the opportunity.
As part of a nationwide marketing campaign roughly translated as "make your dreams come true", people were invited to ask SK to do just that. The female high school students who wanted a famous boy band to become their teachers for a day were disappointed as these corporate Jimmy Savilles plumped for Bucheon's idea. Originally AFC Wimbledon were the desired opposition. The Londoners were busy, leaving, in the words of Shin, just "one other club that fit the bill".
"At first, we thought it was a joke," said FC United's general manager, Andy Walsh, at a pre-match press conference in Seoul today attended by more than 40 reporters and several television crews. "We heard about it from AFC Wimbledon but Ivor Heller [commercial director] there has a reputation for practical jokes so we phoned someone else there to find out if it was true. The board then discussed with the manager to see if it was something he wanted to do as part of a pre-season training. He was very positive and we are very honoured to be here."
Bucheon are also honoured. They are also too excited to dwell on where the money that is funding the game comes from. "I admit that it is strange that after what happened in 2006, SK are paying but there are many arms of SK," Shin said. "The company that managed and moved Bucheon SK was SK Energy. SK Telecom is a different company and these days are keen to help grassroots football. It doesn't matter what level we play at, we just want our own club to cheer. If the devil offered money, we would take it."
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