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There were around 100 members of the media gathered inside the press conference room at the Seoul World Cup Stadium on Tuesday afternoon as they awaited the stars from Tottenham Hotspur and Team K-League.
The two teams are set to play each other in a friendly at the stadium on Wednesday evening in South Korea (12pm UK time) and this was the moment when the nation would get the chance to hear from their star footballer - their international captain Son Heung-min - as well as the renowned Spurs boss Antonio Conte as well as their domestic league stars.
Every available seat was taken in the room, the back of it full to the brim with broadcasters with their cameras and the floor in front of the main press conference table packed with photographers with theirs. With just four members of the UK media, the place was awash with Korean media, which perhaps made what followed slightly unexpected for us travelling journalists.
READ MORE: Every word Antonio Conte said on more Tottenham transfers, why he stayed at the club and Son
Up first were the representatives of Team K-League in head coach Kim Sang-sik and two of the host team's players Kim Jin-su and Lee Seung-woo. The former is one of Son's best friends and the latter is one of the most popular players right now in the K-League, having played at a youth level for Barcelona and later turned out for Hellas Verona in Serie A.
It felt a little bit like the trio were considered to be the warm-up act for the Tottenham stars among the local media. The moderator ended up having to ask a number of questions because when he would turn to the room to ask for some he was met with silence on more than a couple of occasions.
The UK media would have offered up a couple of questions if able to, but presumably the organisers had assumed we would not be interested, for there was no translator on hand at that point, which was a shame because there seemed to be plenty of laughter going on from their panel with their answers, not least from the coach himself, and they were clearly looking forward to the match.
Then it was the turn of Son and Conte and the room suddenly charged with energy as the duo walked in, flashbulbs and camera shutters dominating the air. Now there was a translator, ready to explain the questions to Conte and turn the Spurs head coach's English into Korean for the waiting masses.
The moderator asked both of the pair for their opening comments, something which caught the Italian off guard slightly, having been ready for a grilling. His face seemed to suggest the response 'comments on what?'. Eventually he chose to speak about Korea and the team's training, while Son spoke about the preparations of the players ahead of the new season.
Then it was time for the questions to begin. We readied ourselves for the challenge of trying to get a word in among the onslaught of questions aimed at Son, a man you can find on billboards and adverts all over Seoul and across Korea.
How many questions do you think he was asked? The answer is one. To be fair it was a good question about the previous day's training session, one in which the 30-year-old had dropped to the floor in exhaustion on a couple of occasions, along with other Spurs players, as Conte's fitness coach Gian Piero Ventrone pushed them to their limits during a gruelling two-hour plus open event.
Yet that was the only question put to one of the most famous footballers in Asia, if not the most famous. It was later explained to us that Korean media gets good access to Son whenever he returns for international duty so there was less pressure to ask questions on this occasion, but it still seemed an unusual stance not to quiz a world class superstar who is not in his homeland most weeks of the year.
Again to be fair, the UK media also did not ask him anything. Although with one question per person and so much having happened since we last spoke to Conte back in May, we had a lot we needed to find out from the Spurs head coach about the intervening months.
The Korean media also seemed more interested in quizzing Conte. Of the six questions permitted, half came from the local media and the other half from the visiting journalists.
The Spurs boss was asked by the local media about how the heat in Korea would impact his match plans, what he made of the frenzied welcome from the fans at Incheon International Airport on Sunday and Son welcoming them and also to settle a debate that has been apparently raging in Korea over whether the Spurs attacker is considered world class or not.
Conte was in good humour and he worked the room well. Every time he said the word 'Sonny' so he sparked the curious effect of all of the photographers suddenly coming alive and snapping away, as if they suddenly recognised something he was saying and had to capture the moment he uttered Son's name.
Even more curiously those photographers frequently swarmed from side to side in the space in front of the main table. It created a wave-like motion in front of the Tottenham duo at time as they almost crab-walked from one edge of the room to the other.
Some of the Korean journalists in the room claimed afterwards that Son looked unimpressed when Conte was asked to settle the debate over whether the attacker was world class. I can't say that any of us from the UK group noticed that, but his head coach was never going to say anything else, particularly after calling him world class almost every week of a season he had shared the Premier League Golden Boot with Mohamed Salah.
Conte gave the travelling UK media some interesting answers about why he had stayed at the club after casting plenty of doubts last season, his thoughts on what had happened in the transfer market with all of the five early signings and what was still to come as well as what Tottenham can achieve in the coming campaign.
He seemed to be genuinely excited about the new Tottenham Hotspur being created for him. "I am totally involved in this project," he stated and with his constant grinning he was a long way removed from the man so thoroughly despondent with what he had at his disposal on that rain swept, windy night at Turf Moor in February, the night he suggest he would walk away if the club felt he was the problem.
Everything at Tottenham is being crafted around what Conte wants now. He's being listened to. He even caught himself when he seemed set to criticise what the club had done in the past when speaking to football.london about the unusual sight of Spurs signing players early in a summer transfer window.
"We signed five players and when the ideas are very clear it’s more simple to go into the transfer window and sign the players. Our plan was very clear about the positions and the roles in which we needed to improve and we did it," he said. "I think the club worked very well in this window.
"For every coach to have the players quickly is very important because you can work with them and try to put them into our idea of football. In the past.... I think it was good to sign five players quickly."
He didn't really need to continue his thought. Tottenham have always looked for better deals at the end of the window. This summer they knew they had to back one of the best coaches in the world and the £150m cash injection into the club from the owners ENIC showed just that as well as the five signings that followed before the tour to Korea had even begun, with more to come.
Conte's happy demeanour is a far cry from Mauricio Pochettino's last pre-season tour with Spurs in the summer of 2019 to Singapore and Shanghai. The Argentine was terse and grumpy at times when on camera, cutting a frustrated figure at the lack of transfer movement at the club, with just Jack Clarke and Tanguy Ndombele signed at that point, the former loaned back to Leeds on Pochettino's suggestion.
He clearly did not feel backed at that stage, coming in the wake of taking Spurs to a historic first Champions League final, and just four months later he was gone.
Now is the Conte era and the Italian is getting what he wants and it's clear on his face. What might have been an awkward moment as the press conference was ending turned into a huge photo opportunity that would spread across Korea.
Son and his head coach were asked to hold up half and half scarves advertising the next day's match, when a question was put to them in Korean. Son's face in response suggested that it was an awkward request to put to one of the game's most passionate and fiery managers and it turned out that the duo had been asked to recreate the player's iconic 'photograph' celebration together.
However, the 52-year-old Conte had absolutely no hesitation in jumping fully into the idea and, with a laugh, nailed the celebration quickly, holding the pose in front of the cameras for a good minute as they snapped away.
Conte has grumbled about pre-season tours in the past at other clubs. In truth, no manager really likes them from a preparation perspective because in an ideal world the best work would come with four straight weeks spent on the pitches at the training ground rather than on lucrative trips around the world. The popularity of the Premier League though does not allow for such home comforts, particularly as the globe opens up again following the pandemic.
Yet this summer Italian looks happy, those behind the scenes say he's been in a great mood since returning for pre-season, and that's huge for Tottenham. A smiling Conte is a Conte feeling his club believes in him and what he can achieve. That's when he produces the goods.
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