Barcelona set to extend their preseason tour to play David Beckham’s MLS team
Barcelona are weighing up the idea of extending their pre-season friendly tour of the United States by adding another fixture in their already stacked schedule.
Spanish news outlet Mundo Deportivo says the aforementioned fixture will most likely be played against David Beckham’s Inter Miami side and will be included anytime in mid or late July.
This game will be the first one to be played and will be followed by friendlies against Real Madrid, Juventus and Inter Milan. While Barcelona’s plan was to wrap up the friendlies between July 21 and 31, it is believed that the one against Inter Miami will be possibly played before the 21st.
As of today, Barcelona are yet to release the official dates and the venue, but the aforementioned source says the matches could be played in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. In any way, the plan is for Barcelona to wrap up the pre-season tour in 10 to 12 days.
Crossing the Atlantic
It has been three years since Barcelona last played pre-season friendly matches in the United States. In 2019, the team, then playing under Ernesto Valverde, travelled to Miami and Michigan to play two matches against Napoli.
That tour was, in fact, the last time the team ever crossed the continental boundaries for pre-season friendlies. This is because the COVID-19 pandemic put the world at standstill, forcing the scheduled plans to be postponed.
Three years on and Barcelona will return to the US where the market is booming and the team have a massive fan following.
Xavi had second thoughts
While the idea is more or less confirmed, it is believed that Xavi had his reservations over playing the pre-season matches in the United States.
His preference was to rather keep these matches low-key and play it anywhere near the neighbouring countries like they did last time in Germany.
The idea was pretty much straightforward as Xavi only arrived at Barça in the middle of the season and wants to take advantage of the weeks of preparation to help make a strong start to the 2022/23 season.
