Manchester United are now just days away from kicking off pre-season, and in just two weeks' time they will be in the United States.
Erik ten Hag's side will face Leeds United in Oslo on Wednesday before meeting Lyon in Edinburgh a week later. But the long flight across the pond in the following days will see preparations kicked up a notch as many international players return from their respective holidays.
Four games in nine days - albeit the meeting with Wrexham in San Diego will be for an academy side - presents a busy schedule for United, but the players will no doubt be given time to unwind in their new surroundings. New York, Houston and Las Vegas will be the three destinations for first-team football, and all will have plenty to offer.
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Pre-season tours have become eminently more professional in recent years, with the emergence of sports science and nutrition influencing every second of players' lives while social media sees to it that their every movement is pictured, filmed and Instagrammed.
That wasn't always the case, and stories of past United tours have gone down in folklore. Roy Keane's infamous fight with Peter Schmeichel during the trip to Asia in 1998 stands out, with the pair coming to blows in the early hours of the morning, following an alcohol influenced night.
Nicky Butt refereed the bout in which Keane head-butted his goalkeeper, with the noise waking up Bobby Charlton at the time. Word got out to Sir Alex Ferguson who labelled them both a 'disgrace to the club', and it seemingly wasn't the only time the no-nonsense Irishman was in trouble on tour.
"We had a good night out in pre-season with Man United in Chicago one night that was pretty mad," Keane told the Overlap on Tour recently. "We had a night out, we took a couple young players, pre-season, we were definitely in Chicago, I remember that.
"Woke up the next morning, Denis is waking me up. We’re kind of trying to get down for the bus where we were travelling. I looked and all my face was black, just black. I couldn’t work out what happened. I went: ‘Jesus.’
"Trying to get my gear on. I get on the bus, it’s all coming back to me. I’m sitting at the back of the bus, we’re travelling, obviously towards the airport. Our press officer sends us a story about some of the Man United players being in a strip club, Chicago.
"So I’m down the back, I said: ‘Don’t worry about it. They’ve got no proof. No proof. Everyone relax. I’ve got it under control. I’m obviously the captain, you’re fine with me.’
"Five minutes (later), the phone goes again. Apparently, they’ve got proof. I said: ‘What have they got? What have they got?’
"They said: ‘They’ve got your fingerprints.’ He also said: ‘They have your credit card details. Your passport details.’ And I said: ‘Is that all they’ve got on me?’
"So the bus erupted. They’ve done a story obviously in-depth and obviously when I went in I gave my fingerprints during the night and then I was just rubbing my face as the night was going on.
"That’s all I was rubbing. I was just rubbing my face. I think they ran the story and the headline in some of the Irish papers was something like ‘Horny Devils’ or something."
Keane was part of a United squad who got up to untold mischief during various pre-season tours, with the hugely successful side around the turn of the century more than enjoying their time away. A pre-season tour of Australia in 1999, fresh from winning the treble, saw many of the squad enjoy a night out Down Under.
So much so that former striker Dwight Yorke fell asleep during a morning stretching session, having not got back to the hotel until the early hours of the morning. Ferguson's man-management skills were often put to the test in keeping the raucous group under his watchful eye, although with the success they brought on the pitch it was hard not to grant them their fun.
This summer's squad will be getting up to no such mischief and not just because they aren't going to Chicago. Ultra-professionalism has taken over during the last decade, and pre-season stories that were once commonplace have now disappeared.
Ten Hag will run a tight ship across the pond, with much of the players' down time being spent resting for the forthcoming friendlies.
Antics like that of Keane, Schmeichel and the others remain a thing of the past.
