Madrid’s preseason is still a sketch with many details to be outlined. The squad will begin work on July 8 in Valdebebas and the preparation will culminate 33 days later with the dispute over the first official title of the season: the European Super Cup. Ancelotti’s men will face Eintracht Frankfurt on August 10 in Helsinki. And it will be released in the League on the 13th or 14th. In between, everything to be confirmed. What does seem clear is that the white team will do the Americas again after two years in which the pandemic has kept the preparation ‘confined’ in Valdebebas.
Madrid will travel to the United States to play two friendlies against top rivals: Barcelona and Juventus, the two partners who have remained loyal to the Super League project. The three teams will face each other. El Clásico is scheduled to be played in Las Vegas on Saturday, July 23 (early Sunday 24 in Spain, since there are nine hours difference), while the game against the Bianconeri still has no date. Each meeting can mean between three and five million euros of income for the white coffers.
Will be a visit to the United States very different from that of the years preceding the health emergency. In the first place, because it will not be a typical stay in North America. The team will start the preseason in Valdebebas and the work of those first days, very focused on physical preparation, will be done in their sports city. Completed that first cycle, it will be when the team packs its bags and heads to the United States. Madrid’s presence there will be limited to the two games, the relevant break between games and a handful of advertising commitments. The matches will not be played under the umbrella of the International Champions Cup, as usual. On their last tour, in 2019, the white squad spent three weeks in North America. The work began with a stay of ten days in Montreal (Canada) before starting a tour of the South and East Coast of the United States that took him to Houston, Maryland and New Jersey, where he faced Bayern, Arsenal and Atlético, respectively.
Madrid thus recovers, in part, its summer preparation dynamics. The last two summers he had had a very homebound preparation forced by the restrictions. In 2020 he did not even leave Valdebebas in an express preparation conditioned by the late dispute of the second leg of the Champions League against City. Getafe was his only sparring partner in a ‘training match’ played in Valdebebas behind closed doors. Last year the preparation was fully developed again in the sports city. There they shot against Fuenlabrada and Rayo Vallecano without prying eyes, although this time they did take the plane to play two friendlies: against Rangers in Glasgow (Scotland) and against Milan in Klagenfurt (Austria). This year, controlled the virus, Madrid will cross the pond again.
The Allegiant Stadium will host the Classic in Las Vegas
Las Vegas will take over from Miami, which hosted the 2017 preseason Classic, in which the azulgranas prevailed 2-3 in a friendly in which Madrid appeared, as now, champion of the League and Champions. The match was already planned to be held in 2020, but the pandemic prevented it. It would have meant the inauguration of the Allegiant Stadium, a venue designed to host the games of the NFL Raiders, who left Oakland to settle in the Nevada desert. It has capacity for 65,000 spectators and its construction has cost 1,900 million dollars (more than 1,700 million euros)which makes it the second most expensive stadium in history, far behind SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles ($5.5 billion).
The stadium was inaugurated on September 21, 2020 with a closed-door NFL game between the Raiders and the New Orleans Saints. In two years of operation, it has hosted the CONCACAF Gold Cup final (in August 2021), concerts by various groups (including Guns N’ Roses, the Rolling Stones and Metallica) and the ProBowl (the game of the NFL stars) of 2022. This summer he also has a Chelsea-America scheduled for July 16.
The City of the Game, a tourist destination that in 2019 attracted 42 million visitors, is betting on sporting events to strengthen its image. Next year it will host a Formula 1 night grand prix and in 2024 it will be the scene of the SuperBowl final.