Jesse Lingard says his Korean is decent, good enough to make himself understood when out for dinner and the shocks do not stop there. The former Manchester United and England midfielder was always going to throw himself into his K League adventure with FC Seoul and now that it is over after two years, a new chapter beckoning when the January transfer window opens, the 33-year-old certainly has the tales to tell.

It was the little things as much as anything else, the cultural quirks. And the bigger ones, of course – such as the time he watched an octopus squirm in front of him before eating it. “The food is different, obviously, and I tried live octopus,” Lingard says. “It was moving. I was scared at first but it was all right.”

Lingard loved how the people of Seoul would react to him on the street. “It’s always like: ‘Oh!’” he says, mimicking a sharp intake of breath, putting his hand over his mouth and opening his eyes as wide as possible. “They get very shocked. Then they go: ‘Lingard, Lingard.’ And come over for a photo.”

It was not always so innocent when it came to the Seoul fans, Lingard remembering the run of five straight home defeats last season and a number of losses this time out that should not have happened. “They would wait outside the stadium and block the bus in for an hour – and make the coach go and speak to them,” he says. “It was crazy. It’s because Seoul is the biggest club in the country. I always compare it to United. The expectation to win is always there.”

Lingard is back in his hometown of Warrington, looking forward to Christmas with family and beyond that to his next challenge. He describes himself as “open” as to where it may be. “Europe, Saudi, UAE …” he says.

Lingard’s next club will get a player who retains ferocious drive and stamina. In his final four games for Seoul, the last against Melbourne City in the Asian Champions League on 10 December, he ran between 11.4km and 12.4km. He covered between 9% and 10% of those distances at a very high intensity, an elite-level statistic.

Lingard has also been changed by Seoul. “I feel that I’m more mature now, more responsible,” he says. A part of that was down to how he grew after being given the captain’s armband midway through his first season. He helped the younger players, in particular, to come out of their shells and communicate better on the pitch. The other reason was the move itself, the boldness of it and how he came to own it.

Lingard was at a low ebb at the end of the 2022-23 season with Nottingham Forest, where he had gone on a one-year deal after the expiry of his contract at United. He barely played for Forest over the second half of it, fitness problems a contributing factor, and he could not find a club he wanted to join during the summer transfer window.

In effect, Lingard took six months out, biding his time until the European mid-season window, keeping himself ticking over by training with his personal coach. It would also be a time of heartbreak, Lingard’s grandmother dying in November 2023. “It was really hard because I was so close to her,” he says. “I was always at her house when I was younger. But I thought it was God saying: ‘Just be with her, be with your family. And wait until January.’ That was when Seoul came in.”

Lingard signed a two-year deal on 8 February 2024; the K League season runs from the start of March to the end of November. Never before had Korea welcomed such a high-profile foreign player and only six Englishmen had played there: Dalian Atkinson, Jamie Cureton, Andy Cooke, Chris Marsden, Richard Offiong and Jordon Mutch.

“I was shocked at first because I didn’t know anything about Seoul,” Lingard says. “But when I started to think about it, I thought it could be a chance to reset, to get away from the noise in Manchester. There’s a lot of distractions [in Manchester]. You can get roped into going out and stuff like that. I just wanted to get away and really knuckle down on the football part.”

Lingard endured a false start in the Land of the Morning Calm. He was a substitute in Seoul’s opening three games, then needed surgery on the meniscus in a knee and was out for two months. A crowd of 51,670 had turned up for his home debut against Incheon United at the Seoul World Cup stadium, which has a capacity of 66,704. The club’s average K League attendance during his time with them was about 25,000.

It was possible to worry about how Lingard would settle, mainly because of his previous experience of depression and loneliness, which affected him in 2019 and the early months of 2020. Was a move so far from home really wise? That, however, is in the past and when he recovered his physical fitness, he began to make his mark.

Lingard found a penthouse apartment with views over the Han River; one of the others in the building belongs to the South Korea captain, Son Heung-min. “I didn’t see him around the place because he was away playing [with Tottenham then Los Angeles FC], although he did come to the training ground a few times, so I met him there,” Lingard says. “My best friend is called Sunny and he came to live with me. He was back and forth for the majority of the first year.”

Lingard finished the 2024 season with six goals and three assists from 26 appearances as Seoul came fourth in the 12-team league to qualify for the Asian Champions League. This time out, he had 10 goals and four assists from 34 league appearances as the club finished sixth. He also had three goals and three assists in six Asian Champions League games. Seoul, a sleeping giant fighting to regain prominence, are fifth in the 12-team East Region group with two matches to play. The top eight advance to the last 16.

There is no doubt Lingard was taken aback by the facilities at Seoul, although he never complained. The training ground does not have a canteen, meaning the players have to go out for their own lunch. There are no seats in the changing room and the lack of under-soil heating at the training ground and stadium is a problem.

“If it’s snowing or icy, you can’t train,” Lingard says. “You just have to do gym or run on the Astroturf. We had to do that in the last few weeks of the season because of the cold. We also had a game at the stadium last year where it was freezing and the whole of the left side of the pitch was like ice. We had to play most of the football on the right-hand side.”

It was the people who helped to make it for Lingard. There was his translator, Ki Ji-yong, known as Daniel, who took him to training every day. “A great guy, we got on straight away,” Lingard says. And there were the many friends he made in the dressing room.

“Most of the players could speak good English,” he says. “The manager, Kim Gi-dong, spoke to me through a translator, although in the second year he got a few English words. But d’you know what? My Korean was good. I learned off a young player called Ham Sun-woo. When I joined up for my first pre-season, he’d come to my room. He couldn’t speak English but he was there, trying my hats on, looking at my watch. He had a good energy, a good vibe about him and we just clicked.

“At first, we’d speak through the translator but he’d pick up little words that I would say and I’d pick up his words in Korean. That’s how I learned – just through him. And he learned English through me. Eventually we’d be able to go for dinner by ourselves because we could communicate with each other.

“I’ve got a few stories from dinners out and I remember one from when I first got there and I went to eat with a couple of the young players. Their culture is that they always wait for the oldest person at the table to start eating first. So, my food didn’t come and theirs was there and they’re not eating. I was telling them: ‘Eat. Mine is coming.’ And they were like: ‘No, we can’t.’ I could literally leave my food, not touch it and they wouldn’t be able to touch theirs. That was a shock to me.”

In the end, it was emotional. There was a one-year option in Lingard’s contract, which he did not take up, and, days before the Melbourne game, Seoul announced it would be his last dance. Lingard scored in a 1-1 draw, celebrating with a moonwalk, and fought back tears after when he watched a video on the big screen that paid tribute to “Our beloved captain”. It went on to say that Seoul would always be his home, his name forever remembered by the club.

“I cried when I left United,” Lingard says. “And I made such a bond over these last two years with the players and fans that it was always going to be emotional again. I think I’ve left a strong legacy.”