Following a double session on the first full day, Sunday saw the first triple session of the trip here at the team’s base on Queensland’s Gold Coast.
It was an eye-rubbing early start as the players gathered at the hotel training pitches at 8am for the first of three training stints.
A tempestuous wind had woken many members of the still-jet-lagged media team at around 4am but the after-effects seemed to lower the early morning temperature which would have been of some relief for the players considering the day they had in front of them.
As for us “geeks” (Vincent Kompany’s words, not mine), we had a similarly packed schedule as we aimed to fulfil our brief of taking you as far behind-the-scenes on the tour as possible.
First up, Nicola McCarthy caught up with Yaya Toure (before his CityTV crashing antics) to find out how he’s enjoying the training camp so far.
You can watch that below or by clicking here…
After lunch, we sat down with new signing Enes Unal to conduct the first interview since he joined from Bursaspor.
We approached the interview with some trepidation as we were warned that the young Turkish starlet spoke no English… or rather more pertinently, your otherwise brilliant media team (my words, not Vincent’s) lacked a Turkish tongue between them.
After wracking our brains for the best angle of approach, we settled on that 21st century digital crutch, Google.
Translating our request to speak to him from English into Turkish and thrusting a phone screen before him with the words on, we were somewhat surprised and embarrassed when he smiled and said “no problem”.
As it turned out, the 18-year old could understand English and was able to speak it pretty well himself.
Over lunch, we debated which of Paolo Maldini, John Mayer and Johnny Depp the striker most closely resembled before setting up the lights, camera and mics to speak to him on the 21st floor of our hotel.
After confessing it wasn’t the first time someone had told him he looked like Captain Jack’s alter ego but it was the first occasion he’d copped for Maldini (my shout), it was time to shoot the interview.
Enes understandably opted to answer our questions in his native Turkish so he could fully develop his answers and he seemed perfectly at home in front of the camera as we delved into his career in his homeland, his footballing heroes and what led him to choose to come to City.
We look forward to sharing this interview with you on CityTV in the coming days… once we’ve added the subtitles of course!
From there, it was onto another shoot – this time with George Evans and George Glendon, a duo who certainly know one another well enough.
The pair have advanced through every Academy age-group there is at the club together, from the under-8s to the Elite Development Squad where the pair are regular names on Patrick Vieira’s teamsheets.
Therefore, it was only natural we should get them to star in our latest instalment of “Teammates” – our popular regular feature which calls on players to decide who is the strongest, the better-looking, the best dresser etc, etc.
It was all going so well until someone decided to crash the shoot…
Look who just crashed the filming of @GeorgeEvans70 & @georgegleno's Teammates video... #cityontour pic.twitter.com/EWs0PLX2zF
— Manchester City FC (@MCFC) July 12, 2015Cheers Yaya!
Tonight the lads trained at the Metricon Stadium, home of Aussie rules football outfit, the Gold Coast Suns for the final stage of their training trilogy.
It’s a stunning 25,000 capacity arena and, on the way out to work, a few of the team briefly swapped the round ball for the oval to try their hand at AFL.
What do you think? Does Jesus have a shot at a career change, or should he stick to the wing?
Sadly, our only chance to see Gold Coast Suns in action while we’re here is on Saturday– the same night we take on Melbourne City down the road at the Cbus Stadium… next time we’re in town for sure!
After training, the team returned the hotel for a bite to eat before heading back to bed for a well-earned rest.
Tomorrow we’ll have another triple training session as our first game here in Queensland draws ever-closer…
City on Tour 2015, supported by visitabudhabi.ae.
