THE MANCHESTER United and Liga de Quito players spent yesterday as they've occupied much of the past week - bemoaning jet lag and wandering round an upmarket shopping mall in Yokohama before a late afternoon training session. A few dozen Japanese United fans have waited patiently outside the players' hotel since Monday, but the trip had been devoid of the hysteria which surrounded David Beckham on past United trips to Asia.
The United players especially have enjoyed the relative anonymity, though they've struggled to shake off their jet lag. Sir Alex Ferguson slept for just two hours on Thursday night and despite advice from their medical staff, the players have clearly not been at their optimum level.
"We are all finding it difficult," admitted Ferguson yesterday. "But the players will be better for the final. On Thursday (in United's 5-3 semi final win over Gamba Osaka) towards the end of the game there were signs that jet lag was taking a little effect. Not a great deal but enough to let the game go very loose in the last 20 minutes."
"It does have an impact when you can't sleep," said midfielder Darren Fletcher. "Lack of sleep affects anybody's performance no matter what they do."
Ryan Giggs agreed: "It has been quite difficult over here. I have not slept much, four or five hours sleep a night really. I hope it won't have a knock-on effect on our title defence. We don't know how it will affect us next Friday when we play Stoke."
Both players were speaking before this morning's FIFA Club World Cup final between the European and South American champions in Yokohama, the venue for the 2002 World Cup final.
While the competition has been maligned by the British media, United have taken the tournament seriously - and not only because the winners pick up £3.4 million. Ferguson brought a full-strength squad to Japan.
Almost 1000 United supporters have also shown their enthusiasm for the competition, and will be over £2,000 lighter after their trip, perhaps more given that a weak pound and strong Yen means a pint of beer is around £9 in the bars of Roppongi or Shibuya.
"You have to win the European Cup to be here," said one fan, John Taylor. "We want to be world champions. Liverpool have never won it and Manchester City fans don't know where Japan is."
"I can assure you that we've not come here just to go sight-seeing in Japan," said defender Patrice Evra. "We could become the first English team to win this competition, and if we did so we'd pull off a League-Champions League-Club World Cup triple, which would be quite something. I honestly think that every player in the squad has that in mind and therefore we're totally focused on fulfilling our objective. We can sleep when we get back to Manchester."
The problem with the competition isn't the final, but the calibre of some of the seven competing teams.
"I watched a little bit of the game between Adelaide United and Al Ahly," says the former United and Celtic midfielder Paddy Crerand, in Japan with MUTV. "It was a little bit embarrassing, the standard was so bad."
The current incarnation of the tournament began in 2000 when United and Real Madrid were the European representatives in Brazil. Prior to that, the South American and European champions had met between 1960 and 2004, though not without controversy, as those Celtic fans who recall the 1967 three-game fracas against Racing Club of Argentina will recall.
It was worse two years later when several Estudiantes players were suspended for their barbaric behaviour against Milan. Concern for their players and a lack of financial incentive saw European champions Liverpool decline to take part in 1977 and 1978, while there were no games in 1975 and 1978 at all.
United won the competition in 1999 by beating Palmeiras in Tokyo, but they also played in the Brazil tournament, controversially forgoing the chance to defend the FA Cup after government pressure.
Low crowds and poor public relations scarred the image of the competition so badly it wasn't resurrected until 2005 when Japan was chosen to stage a tournament featuring Liverpool and Sao Paulo. It was a safe bet. Japanese fans are wealthy and demand to see some of the biggest teams in the world is high. And by playing two games in succession in the same stadium, the organisers avoided embarrassingly low attendances. The respectable average crowd of 37,351 in 2005 has seen the tournament remain in Japan ever since and gates have risen year on year. Last year's tournament average was 45,163 and it will be higher this year if the Yokohama stadium is filled to its 67,000 capacity as expected.
The teams take it seriously too. The tournament is highly regarded in South America: the prestige of beating the European champions is enhanced by the tournament acting as a shop window for players. And while Liga de Quito may have beaten South America's best side on the way to winning the Copa Liberatadores, they operate on a fraction of United's huge budget and their players' average salary is around £800 a week. £3.4 million goes a long way in Ecuadorian football.
"We're living the dream," said Quito's Luis Bolano, who scored in their 3-0 semi-final victory over Mexican side Pachuca. "We've reached the final of a world club championship and we are more than ready for it."
It's not just the South American teams who are enthusiastic. AC Milan's poor form last season was blamed on them focusing their attention on winning the Club World Cup. In beating Argentina's Boca Juniors 4-2 in a thrilling match, Milan became the first European winners of the competition. They consequently broke the South American dominance which had seen Sao Paulo beat 1-0 Liverpool in 2005 and another Brazilian side, Internacional, defeat Barcelona a year later. The tournament moves to the United Arab Emirates next year for two years.
The European champions will prefer the new venue for one reason alone: they won't suffer jet leg.
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