Vietnamese Fan Burns Tickets After Man City Players Ignore Fans

Like most players during far-flung preseason tours, Manchester City’s players don’t want to be where they are right now. Unfortunately for Vietnamese fans hoping to enjoy their heroes’ visit, the players aren’t too good at hiding their disinterest, either. This apathy pissed off one fan enough to even set his tickets on fire in protest.

Here is a clip of one Vietnamese fan trying to chat up some players as they make their way to the team hotel, posted with the caption “Man City’s stars remain indifferent to the hearts of Vietnamese fans”:

What the cameraman is doing here is the same thing you see all the time when teams make their way through airports and hotels. The protocol here is usually to humor the fans for a question or two, or at least flash them a couple smiles and waves. The man’s English is a little hard to parse, and he did had the misfortune of picking a couple players with little-to-no English speaking skills (David Silva, Fernando). But the others definitely hear their names being called and just as quickly as they turn their heads in response, they look away.

This apparently wasn’t the only evidence of the team’s indifference to local fans. In a 4:31 minute video, this fan voices (presumably, since it’s in Vietnamese) similar concerns before setting some tickets he had bought for the friendly against a Vietnamese all-star team on fire:

This wasn’t a great moment for the Premier League’s reputation in that part of the world, but at least it was better than the league’s last high-profile incident in Southeast Asia.

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