Why European soccer headed to the U.S. for preseason – and what comes next?

Through the torrential downpour and thunder rolling in the sky above MetLife Stadium, 82,154 fans bore the brunt of a mid-summer storm to watch Barcelona beat Real Madrid 2-1 in a thrilling preseason friendly between two rivals that has become somewhat of a tradition in the United States.

It did not matter that some of the Spanish clubs’ biggest stars were either still on vacation, resting from the recent European Championship and Copa America, or absent on Olympic Games duty for their countries in France. This was still El Clasico and the crowd reveled in watching young stars including Barcelona’s Pau Victor and Nico Paz and veterans such as Real Madrid’s Ballon d’Or winner Luka Modric battle it out on the muddy pitch across the Hudson River from Manhattan for 90 minutes of pure entertainment.

Spectators sang along to the club’s chants and stadium staff set off fireworks for every goal scored, even those that were later ruled out for offside. It was an impressive reception for a match that, as far as official record-keeping goes, meant close to nothing. But that match last weekend, and dozens of others like it throughout the United States, have come to mean a whole lot to the international soccer ecosystem.

“This is preseason and it’s totally different than the normal Clasico,” Barcelona head coach Hansi Flick told reporters afterwards. “You can see that a lot of players are missing (from) both teams, but at the end (of the day) it’s also really good to have all these players here. The young players… it’s fantastic to have them here.”

Considering the hype seen in New Jersey that night, players’ absences did little to deter fans from flocking to a venue that is the home to New York’s two NFL teams — the Giants and Jets. Enthusiasm for the match was not impacted, even when it was halted after just 12 minutes of play because of severe weather, not resuming for an hour.

Flick was addressing reporters inside a glass-enclosed conference room, with fans gathered around and peering through those translucent walls at the stadium which will host the 2026 men’s World Cup final. The supporters’ cheers muffled journalists’ questions, with security repeatedly asking them to quiet down. Fans lingered in and around the stadium long after the game ended.

This was just one of the many high-profile soccer friendlies that took place across the U.S. this summer, with European football clubs jet-setting coast to coast to compete on pitches inside MLS, NFL, college football and even MLB stadiums. Teams from the English Premier League, Spain’s La Liga, Serie A in Italy and the German Bundesliga (plus Wrexham of the English Football League) held glitzy press tours and community events across the country. The painstaking preparation for Wolverhampton Wanderers’ three-match tour — estimated to have cost £1,050,000 ($1,344,000) in total — was detailed by The Athletic.

A week before Barca-Real, Manchester City and AC Milan played inside Yankee Stadium before a crowd of 46,122 fans. The Italian side won 3-2 with U.S. men’s national team captain Christian Pulisic coming on in the 80th minute. Pulisic has understandably been the face of Milan’s own tour, while City boasted players including Norwegian striker Erling Haaland and England international Jack Grealish at fan events around New York City in the lead-up to matchday.

This was a big footballing spectacle, yet the business relationships between the professional clubs and baseball’s Yankees run deep.

In 2013, Manchester City and the Yankees announced plans to establish an MLS expansion side, NYCFC. City Football Group owns both clubs, as well as a portfolio of others around the world.

As for Milan, the team also has deep ties to American businesses. The club is owned by New York-based RedBird Capital Partners and, in 2022, the Yankees purchased a minority stake. That same year, the two teams announced plans to begin selling AC Milan products inside Yankee Stadium. Milan’s CEO Giorgio Furlani said to reporters in New Jersey last week: “I would confidently say we are the most American club of Italian clubs, and we’re very happy to be here.”

Wrexham, a Welsh club from the English third tier made globally famous by a documentary series about them and co-owned by American actor Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds, the Canadian star of the Deadpool movie franchise, have played Chelsea, another Premier League club in American hands, in the States in successive summers. When the sides met in July 2023 at Chapel Hill in North Carolina, 50,596 were in attendance. Twelve months on, for a 2-2 draw at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, the announced attendance was 32,724.

How many times can these teams keep going back to the U.S. well?

American ownership in international football has become a growing trend, with a prominent example in Premier League side Arsenal’s owners, the Kroenke family, through their Kroenke Sports & Entertainment company (KSE). As well as Arsenal, the KSE sports conglomerate includes the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams. The Rams’ SoFi Stadium has also become a home of sorts for Arsenal, having played there in the past two preseasons. Arsenal Women is also going on a U.S. preseason tour this month, albeit on the east coast, to play NWSL side Washington Spirit and Women’s Super League rivals Chelsea.

The U.S. is a key market for Arsenal and there are more synergies between the twin jewels in the Kroenkes’ multi-sport crown.

The two sides held a ‘Football meets Football’ community event at the Rams’ training complex, with Rams head coach Sean McVay and Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta both taking part, as well as the two team captains, Martin Odegaard and Cooper Kupp. KSE figurehead Stan Kroenke and son Josh, an Arsenal director, were also present. McVay, only 38, and Arteta, still relatively new to Premier League management at 42, have a good relationship and speak fairly often.

The 62,486 crowd for Arsenal’s 2-1 win over Manchester United at 70,000-capacity SoFi two weeks ago was, however, a little down on what might have expected and Arteta commented afterwards on the small dimensions of the pitch, which had only recently been laid in the NFL arena and will be replaced by the time the 2026 World Cup, which the U.S. will co-host with Canada and Mexico, comes to town. The cheapest tickets were more than $100 (£78) each, with a 10 percent emissions tax on top of that.

James T Butts, mayor of Inglewood, the district of Los Angeles where the stadium is located, wants soccer to keep coming back to LA. “I may be biased but I think this is the pre-eminent stadium in the world right now,” he told reporters. “I’ve discovered that soccer fans are more rabid than NFL fans, and so we love every time there is a soccer game. It adds to the ambience of the city. Adds to the viability of the project. We love it.”

The ability to watch two top-tier European clubs play in your local stadium remains a rare experience for Americans.

The University of South Carolina hosted Liverpool’s 3-0 win against Manchester United last weekend, with a recorded attendance of 77,559. In Philadelphia a few days earlier, Liverpool beat Arsenal 2-1 in front of 69,879 fans at Lincoln Financial Field, home of the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles — the largest crowd for a soccer match at the venue.

Liverpool also has U.S.-based owners in Fenway Sports Group and chose to base themselves in Pittsburgh (where they beat Spain’s Real Betis 1-0 before a 42,679 crowd), Philadelphia and Columbia, South Carolina this summer as they returned to American soil after a five-year absence. “It’s an incredibly important market, and one that we still think has tremendous opportunity for growth,” Liverpool CEO Billy Hogan told The Athletic last month.

Beginning next year, clubs from Europe and elsewhere will be coming to the U.S. in the summer for games far more important than a few preseason friendlies.

“For the fans, it becomes even more special because they see the two big teams, two big clubs play against each other,” says Sweden legend Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who works as an adviser for AC Milan’s U.S. ownership, having played in the States for LA Galaxy of MLS. “Especially over here in the U.S. — because normally this (such a fixture) would be a Champions League game.”

But as the market continues to grow, with the first edition of the revamped and greatly expanded Club World Cup to be played in the United States next summer, a Champions League-level match happening here does not appear that far-fetched.

In May, an attorney representing soccer’s world governing body FIFA said in federal court that a rule change allowing domestic league matches to be played abroad could come “before the end of the year”. This was declared during an in-court status conference for an ongoing antitrust lawsuit between New York-based promoter Relevent Sports and U.S. Soccer, the game’s national federation.

At the time, FIFA declined to elaborate on the specifics of what its attorney was referencing. Just two weeks later, however, at its annual congress in Thailand, FIFA approved a working group that was tasked with considering rule changes for “authorizing interclub football matches or competitions”, and the criteria to be applied for signing off on such competitions.

That lawsuit filed by Relevent stems back to summer 2018 when it attempted to level up from U.S. preseason friendlies.

The promoter announced plans to host a regular-season La Liga match between Barcelona and Girona in Miami, Florida. But Barcelona later withdrew from this commitment when FIFA announced a policy barring domestic leagues from playing regular-season games outside of a club’s home territory.

A few months later, Relevent attempted to host two Ecuadorian clubs for an official league match on American soil. U.S. Soccer denied its sanction, citing FIFA’s policy. Relevent then sued FIFA and U.S. Soccer on antitrust grounds – and while FIFA is no longer a defendant in the suit, Relevent and U.S. Soccer are slated for a settlement conference in this matter next month.

While the antitrust lawsuit crawled through the American legal system, reaching the Supreme Court last year, the business of international friendlies in the States only grew larger. But a preseason friendly is not the same as an official match that truly matters, as many coaches referenced in their preseason tours this summer.

That becomes trickier to imagine, though, when considering the already-congested football match calendar. Any trip over from Europe or South America would have to be an isolated occurrence, similar to how the NFL hosts only a handful of international matches each season.

But those in the game see the existing crowded calendar as an inevitable part of football’s growth. Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola said as much when asked about players struggling to play at their peak in every match because of the schedule.

“The clubs have to travel to make our brand (known) around the world,” Guardiola said from the Yankees’ press conference room. This may be the new norm, but it didn’t happen overnight. “It happened for five, six, seven years,” Guardiola said. “It is what it is, and we have to adapt.”

It seems inevitable that, pretty soon, they will have to adapt yet again.

(Top photo: Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images)