With blazing sunshine fading over a hot Dublin day, this penultimate friendly for Manchester United and Leeds United felt like a pre-season game on a far continent, not one staged a few hundred miles from the teams’ home across the Irish Sea.
The phoney-war element is always present whatever the locale, as players sharpen technique and fitness, so when Joshua Zirkzee’s instant left-foot shot met Diogo Dalot’s zipped-in cross and James Trafford saved low, all involved could be satisfied.
