Neil Humphreys: You don't boo your own in pre-season
United fans' poor treatment of Ashley Young is embarrassing
Among the international journalists in the National Stadium press box, the initial confusion soon gave way to muttered questions.
Why are they booing Ashley Young? Did he foul someone? Why are they booing his every touch? Why is a stadium filled with Manchester United fans booing a Manchester United player in a pre-season friendly against Inter Milan?
That's the most awkward question. It's the one with the most uncomfortable answers for United supporters who condoned the abuse and for a schizophrenic nation using a friendly between two foreign clubs at the International Champions Cup (ICC) to showcase its sports culture.
The fact that international journalists focused on the unwarranted abuse and much of the local coverage highlighted the glittery spectacle shows different audiences with different agendas.
And the English Premier League obviously covets both.
In the UK, the EPL still needs local support to provide the surround-sound atmosphere for cable TV packages, but needs overseas supporters more for its financial growth.
In other words, these friendlies are attempts to stretch the umbilical cord beyond the local community to reach the likes of Singapore and Shanghai, where folks go to games at Old Trafford as often as United go to Kallang.
It's a weird, incongruous relationship where both parties aren't entirely sure how to behave, like pen pals who speak to each other online regularly but meet up only every other year at corporate events. How should they interact with each other?
For Liverpool, it's easy, perhaps unfairly so. Almost every Reds fan from Malaysia to Melbourne would have performed a spine-tingling rendition of You'll Never Walk Alone at some point.
Even Tottenham Hotspur and Juventus have their globally recognised chants. Oh When the Spurs Go Marching In and the guttural, "JUVE", resonated throughout in the second ICC match, which was a superior football contest in every sense.
Cristiano Ronaldo's every touch inevitably felt like an electric shock surging through the stadium, but everyone bleats when one of the G.O.A.Ts comes to town. The greatest transcend both the cult of sport and celebrity.
DIEHARDS
But the United-Inter game was often a perplexing hybrid of the two, a mix of selfie-takers with their backs to the action and diehards so desperate to show their adoration, they weren't sure how to react.
The Red Devils didn't really sing. The tiny pockets of Inter supporters made more noise in that regard.
Indeed, there were so many selfies taken when United strolled onto the pitch that the volume actually dropped, a bizarre occurrence never previously witnessed at a United fixture.
United fans then cheered their favourites and booed Young, seemingly convinced that such a pantomime practice was the correct, tribal display of devotion.
But the abuse achieved the opposite effect, betraying their ignorance.
You don't boo your own, not in pre-season before a serious ball has been kicked. You don't boo for crimes committed in seasons past.
The slate is wiped clean. Clocks are reset. Fresh start.
You don't boo in pre-season.
Ever.
On social media, some United fans, perhaps surprised at the international backlash to their interpretation of "fandom", doubled down, pointing out how poor Young was last season.
But any public criticism of Paul Pogba was negligible, despite his inconsistency last season, his desire to leave and his refusal to speak at a sponsor's event on Sunday. On the contrary, he got some of the loudest cheers of the night.
Young got called the N-word, a despicable act caught on camera.
Maybe the culprit was just a moron. Maybe he really was racist (the two are usually intertwined).
Either way, he was another United fan grasping for the right tone and falling short, an extreme example of the underlying problem.
STADIUM ETIQUETTE
Turning up in huge numbers once a year to watch a foreign club at Kallang while neglecting the Singapore Lions and domestic football all season long doesn't really nurture stadium etiquette.
A life on the terraces makes the appropriate behaviour at football matches instinctive, from the gut. A life on the Internet doesn't.
Not every United fan booed, of course (indeed some booed the booing, which was a gallant effort, but only added to the confusion). And Juventus and Tottenham delivered an exhilarating football match, on and off the pitch.
But the incessant abuse whenever Young touched the ball made for an inauthentic football occasion, creating instead a bewildering pantomime of graceless jeering.
Young didn't understand it. Nor did his manager Ole Gunner Solskjaer afterwards. Nor did the international media.
You don't boo your own in pre-season. You just don't.
Singapore continues to be a peerless venue for staging a great show, but an organic football culture remains a work in progress.
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