According to Mundo Deportivo, it will be confirmed next week that Arsenal will face Barcelona in their annual Joan Gamper Trophy.
The pre-season friendly – soon to be renamed the ‘Denis Suarez derby’ – is set to take place at Camp Nou on Sunday, 4 August and will be our final prep before we take on Newcastle United at St James’ Park in our Premier League opener a week later.
Those Arsenal first team players not involved in summer tournaments are due to report for pre-season training in the second week of July meaning Unai Emery will likely lean on youngsters for the game at Boreham Wood.
After that, we rack up more than 15,000 miles playing seven further friendlies.
FULL LIST OF ARSENAL PRE-SEASON FRIENDLIES 2019
July 6th – Boreham Wood v Arsenal
July 15th – Colorado Rapids v Arsenal
July 17th – Arsenal v Bayern Munich (International Champions Cup)
July 20th – Fiorentina v Arsenal (International Champions Cup)
July 23rd – Arsenal v Real Madrid (International Champions Cup)
July 28th – Arsenal v Lyon (Emirates Cup)
July 31st – Angers v Arsenal
August 4th – Barcelona v Arsenal (Joan Gamper Trophy)
I realize that in pre-season the squad is a lot bigger with the addition of the youth players getting a look but doesn’t this seem like a fuck ton of games for a month? The players have essentially a little more than a month of rest before gearing way back up.
the way they capitulated the end of the season!! f**kem they don’t deserve a rest
We’ve got to pay for Denis Suarez somehow…
The loser ‘wins’ Dennis Suarez!
4M
It’s for fitness. One month is a lot of down time from a finely honed athlete. Look at how shit we played in Baku, even after partaking in a tune-up game.
Well, at least we’ll have CL football in pre-season xD
Out of the frying pan and into the … err, volcano that has lava-piranhas, giant obsidian-plated tarantulas and is closer to eruption than a teenagers acne-ridden face post Burger King banquet…
Let’s get behind our rag-tag lot; with our promising youth, and hopefully the odd addition (including our lovely new kits!), we can cause a result to send us into the new season full of confidence.
Bring ‘em on!
That first stanza made me nauseous
Given there is now a “winter break” where the players get a week off in February, I wonder if the plan is have the players going at full speed into the season, less worried about burnout come midseason due to this new break, forgetting that it is just one week off.
I bet we arrange games during the break too
I realise this is probably a joke. But I do remember reading that the winter break is going to be strictly enforced. No training at all. It is supposed to be a proper holiday, with lager and kebabs hopefully.
Playing friendlies in pre-season is essential to get your team ready for the season ahead, but that does seem quite a big number of them. Especially when you consider the fact that they will be played all over the world (different cities in the USA and Europe), with all the time difference, jet-lag and everything that comes with it.
It surely wouldn’t hurt to have just a bit more peaceful time to do some proper training as well?
But then again, who am I to say…
Calm down, dude, it’s cool. Things never go wrong for us when we play away…
Hang on…
Oh ffff——!
Well, judging by who is holding up that trophy, it appears that Barca must take this tournament somewhat seriously.
Prediction…. By the time we’ve started the season we’ll likely have lost to Barca, Real, Bayern and Lyon in meaningless friendlies, and our fan base will be in complete meltdown
I think the Bayern match is Arsenal Women. Pretty good chance we’ll win.
Nice mix of different teams.
How else do we face them? We are no longer CL.
Borehamwood is a single word
The place is…
Not good for moral when Barcelon beat us 4-0. I rather play Swindon or Barnet for the last game to boost our moral. We need our tails up for Newcastle, not have messi mess with us.
Leno…bellerin holding sokratis saliba kolas….torreira xaka….fraser laka auba….hope we replace kolas with a real left back and xaka with a proper defensive midfielder in our starting 11
This many preseason fixtures are for one thing: revenue generation.