Amid torrential rain and thunder at MetLife Stadium, 82,154 fans braved a midsummer storm to watch Barcelona beat Real Madrid 2-1 in a thrilling preseason friendly between the two rivals that has become something of a tradition in the United States.
It didn’t matter that some of the biggest stars of Spanish clubs were still on holiday, resting from the recent European Championships and Copa America, or not playing for their country in France at the Olympics. It was still El Clásico, and the crowd was delighted to see young stars including Barcelona’s Pau Victor and Nico Paz and veterans like Real Madrid’s Ballon d’Or winner Luka Modric compete for 90 minutes of pure entertainment on a muddy pitch across the Hudson River from Manhattan.
The crowd sang along to the club’s chant, and the stadium staff set off fireworks after every goal, even one that was later ruled offside. It was an impressive reception for a game that carries little meaning for the official record books. But that game last weekend, and dozens of others across the United States, has come to mean a lot to the international football ecosystem.
“This is pre-season and it’s not like a normal Clásico,” Barcelona coach Hansi Flick told reporters afterwards. “You can see that both teams are missing a lot of players, but it’s good to have all these players here. The young players… it’s fantastic to have them here.”
Given the hype that New Jersey had that night, the absence of the players did little to stop fans from flocking to the stadium, home to New York’s two NFL teams, the Giants and Jets. The excitement for the game was not dampened when the game was stopped just 12 minutes into the game due to bad weather and not resumed for an hour.
Fans are evacuated from the MetLife Stadium after the Barcelona-Real match was abandoned (Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images)
Flick spoke to reporters in a glass-enclosed conference room, while fans gathered around the stadium, peering through the translucent walls of the stadium where the 2026 Men’s World Cup final will be held. The cheers of the supporters pointed to the reporters’ questions, and security repeatedly told them to be quiet. Fans lingered in and around the stadium long after the game had ended.
This is just one of many high-profile soccer friendlies across the United States this summer, with European soccer clubs jetting from coast to coast to compete in stadiums inside MLS, NFL, college football and even MLB stadiums. Teams from the English Premier League, Spain’s La Liga, Italy’s Serie A and Germany’s Bundesliga (including Wrexham of the English Football League) have staged glittering press tours and community events across the country. The grueling preparations for Wolverhampton Wanderers’ three-game tour, estimated to cost £1,050,000 ($1,344,000), have been detailed below. work out.
A week before the Barca-Real match, Manchester City and AC Milan played at Yankee Stadium in front of 46,122 spectators. The Italians won 3-2, with U.S. Men’s National Team captain Christian Pulisic coming on as an 80th-minute substitute. Pulisic was naturally the face of the Milan tour, and City boasted players including Norwegian striker Erling Haaland and England international Jack Grealish at fan events around New York City ahead of the game.
Erling Haaland running out of Yankee Stadium last month (Stephen Nadler/ISI Photos/Getty Images)
Although this was a big-time soccer match, the business relationship between the professional club and the baseball team, the Yankees, was very close.
In 2013, Manchester City and the Yankees announced plans to form an MLS expansion team, NYCFC. City Football Group owns both clubs and a portfolio of other clubs around the world.
In Milan’s case, the team also has deep ties to American corporations. The club is owned by New York-based RedBird Capital Partners, and the Yankees bought a minority stake in 2022. That same year, the two teams announced plans to start selling AC Milan merchandise inside Yankee Stadium. “We can confidently say that we are the most American of the Italian clubs, and we are very happy to be here,” Milan CEO Giorgio Furrani told reporters in New Jersey last week.
Barcelona and AC Milan play each other in Baltimore, Maryland on August 6 (Samuel Corum/AFP via Getty Images)
Wrexham, a Welsh club in England’s third tier, made famous worldwide by a documentary series and co-owned by American actor Rob McElhenney and Canadian star of the Deadpool film series Ryan Reynolds, played back-to-back summers in the United States against another Premier League club, Chelsea. When the two teams met in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in July 2023, 50,596 people showed up. Twelve months later, 32,724 people showed up for a 2-2 draw at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.
How many times can these teams return to the US?
American ownership in international football is a growing trend, with the Kroenke family, owners of Premier League side Arsenal, making a notable example through their Kroenke Sports & Entertainment company (KSE). In addition to Arsenal, KSE’s sports conglomerate also includes the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams. The Rams’ SoFi Stadium has also been Arsenal’s home ground for the past two pre-season games. Arsenal Women also head to the US for their pre-season tour this month, but will face NWSL side Washington Spirit and Women’s Super League rivals Chelsea on the East Coast.
The US is a key market for Arsenal and there are further synergies between the two jewels in Kroenke’s multisport crown.
The two teams held a ‘Football Meets Football’ community event at the Rams’ training complex, with Rams head coach Sean McVay and Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta both in attendance, along with team captains Martin Odegaard and Cooper Kupp. KSE chief executive Stan Kroenke and his son Josh, the Arsenal manager, were also in attendance. McVay, who is only 38, and Arteta, who is relatively new to the Premier League managerial scene at 42, have a good relationship and talk quite frequently.
(L-R) Josh Kroenke, Cup, Arteta, McVay, Odegaard and Stan Kroenke on July 26 (Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
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The crowd of 62,486 for Arsenal’s 2-1 win over Manchester United at the 70,000-capacity SoFi two weeks ago was slightly smaller than expected, and Arteta later said the smaller pitches, recently laid in NFL stadiums, would be replaced by the time the 2026 World Cup, which the United States, Canada and Mexico will co-host, was due to take place. The cheapest tickets were more than $100 (£78) each, plus a 10% emissions tax.
James T. Burt, mayor of the Inglewood District of Los Angeles, where the stadium is located, wants soccer to continue to return to L.A. “I may be biased, but I think this is the best stadium in the world right now,” he told reporters. “We’ve found that soccer fans are more passionate than NFL fans, so we love it when we have a soccer game. It adds to the atmosphere of the city. It makes the project more viable. We love it.”
For Americans, it’s still a rare experience to see two top European clubs play each other in their local stadium.
The University of South Carolina hosted Liverpool’s 3-0 win over Manchester United last weekend, with a record attendance of 77,559. A few days earlier in Philadelphia, Liverpool beat Arsenal 2-1 in front of 69,879 fans at Lincoln Financial Field, home of the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles. It was the largest attendance ever for a soccer game at that stadium.
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Liverpool also have a US-based owner in Fenway Sports Group, and this summer, after a five-year absence, they returned to the US, with bases in Pittsburgh (where they beat Spain’s Real Betis 1-0 in front of 42,679 people), Philadelphia, Columbia and South Carolina. “It’s a hugely important market and we think there’s still a huge opportunity for growth,” Liverpool CEO Billy Hogan said. work out transmission.
Manchester United and Liverpool strike in Columbia, South Carolina (Grant Halverson/Getty Images)
Starting next year, clubs from Europe and elsewhere will come to the U.S. in the summer for games that are far more important than a few preseason friendlies.
“For the fans, it’s more special to see two big teams, two big clubs, going against each other,” said Swedish legend Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who serves as an adviser to AC Milan’s U.S. owner and played in the U.S. for MLS’s LA Galaxy. “Especially in the U.S., where it’s usually a Champions League game.”
But with the market continuing to grow, and the inaugural Club World Cup set to be held in the United States next summer after a revamped and vastly expanded format, it doesn’t seem so out of the question to see Champions League-caliber matches here.
In May, a lawyer representing soccer’s world governing body, FIFA, told a federal court that a rule change allowing domestic league matches to be played overseas could happen “before the end of the year.” The announcement was made during an intra-court status conference in the ongoing antitrust case between New York-based promoter Relevent Sports and soccer’s national federation, US Soccer.
At the time, FIFA did not elaborate on the specifics of what the lawyers were referring to. But just two weeks later, at its annual tournament in Thailand, FIFA approved a working group tasked with considering changes to the rules for “licensing inter-club football matches or competitions” and the criteria to be applied to signing such competitions.
The lawsuit filed by Relevent began in the summer of 2018, when the company was trying to take its preseason friendlies in the United States to the next level.
The promoter announced plans to hold a regular season La Liga match between Barcelona and Girona in Miami, Florida. However, Barcelona later backed out of this commitment after FIFA announced a policy banning domestic leagues from playing regular season matches outside the club’s home territory.
A few months later, Relevent attempted to host two Ecuadorian clubs for official league matches on U.S. soil. U.S. Soccer refused to sanction them, citing FIFA’s policies. Relevent sued FIFA and U.S. Soccer for alleged antitrust violations. FIFA is no longer a defendant in the lawsuit, but Relevent and U.S. Soccer are scheduled to hold a settlement conference on the matter next month.
While antitrust lawsuits crawled through the U.S. legal system and reached the Supreme Court last year, the international friendly business in the U.S. has grown. But preseason friendlies are not the same as truly important official games, as many coaches noted on preseason tours this summer.
But given the already crowded football schedule, it’s hard to imagine that travel from Europe or South America would be an isolated affair, similar to how the NFL only hosts a handful of international games each season.
But those involved in the game see the current crowded schedule as an inevitable part of the game’s development. Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola said so when asked about his players not being able to perform at their best in every game because of the schedule.
“The club has to travel to promote our brand around the world,” Guardiola said at the Yankees press conference. That may be the new normal, but it didn’t happen overnight. “It’s been happening for five, six, seven years,” Guardiola said. “That’s what it is, and we have to adapt.”
It looks like they’ll have to adapt again soon.
(Above photo: Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images)
