Why Manchester United players were running during half-time in Leeds United pre-season game?

The players were spotted sprinting at half-time during the Leeds game.

Manchester United and Leeds United drew 0-0 on Saturday in Stockholm to start the preseason. Diego Leon and Matheus Cunha, two recent additions to the Reds, both performed admirably against the recently promoted Premier League team. Manager Ruben Amorim gave them their unofficial United debuts.

Bryan Mbeumo is expected to join them this summer after completing a £70 million transfer from Brentford to Old Trafford. The Red Devils will embark on a preseason tour to the United States as part of their ongoing preparations for the upcoming season. Amorim’s team will travel to Chicago on Tuesday and will remain in the city for the majority of their three-match tour.

On July 26, Manchester United will play West Ham United in New Jersey in the opening game of the Premier League Summer Series. Before their tour ends on August 3 against Everton in Atlanta, they next travel back to Chicago to play Bournemouth.

However, seeing several of Manchester United’s players performing fitness routines at halftime during Saturday’s match against Leeds was a noteworthy thing. STATSports, a performance monitoring technology business, has explained the strange scenes.

“Interesting to see Manchester United’s fitness coaches having the players doing top up runs at half time, rather than full time,” they said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“Looks like the players are doing half way to end line in <9secs which would elicit High Speed Running metres (HSR).”

“Could be extra conditioning or simply having the players meet their individual thresholds – the players were wearing our GPS in-game, so the coaches were monitoring in real-time on the sideline.”

Before their difficult Premier League game against Arsenal at home on August 17, United’s players will be trying to get fully fit. In the first two months of 2025–2026, the Reds will also play challenging league games against Chelsea and Manchester City.

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