A recent report has suggested that the Premier League giants are looking to set up fixtures in Japan against La Liga champs Barcelona and Kawasaki Frontale. The west London side are already making pre-season plans in Asia for the upcoming campaign, as they look to improve their schedule for the manager for the upcoming campaign.
Maurizio Sarri had complained about the pre-season plans and the fact that his squad had to travel a lot. The Londoners were heading to Australia for a short stint and then had to come back to Europe to play friendlies in France and Ireland.
This didn’t go down with the new manager, who had certain other ideas with regards to his team’s pre-season and wanted it to be better planned out. Though it did not have an impact on the team’s start to the new campaign, the overall impact is possibly visible now, as the players look really tired.
The club is now trying to make life easier for the manager and the team, with the former said to be on the verge of losing his job at Stamford Bridge, due to the poor results in recent times. This is why Sarri wants to get things sorted out, ahead of the start of the new campaign and the management has obliged as well.
The Omiya Stadium in Saitama is a potential venue that is being discussed, which has a capacity of 15,500, as Chelsea are focused on including some commercial activities as well. This will be tandem with their main sponsors, Yokohama Tyres and a good way of generating revenue as well.
The team from England is also looking to have a training camp yet again in Europe due to the fact that the ones in Austria in several recent terms have proved to be rather popular amongst the players. These plans come outside of the International Champions Cup which they have been part of in recent seasons, which now gives the club more power to set their own schedule.
Apart from this, there will also be an unorthodox end-of-season friendly match between the Londoners and New England Revolution. This match is described as a ‘Game For Change’, with Roman Abramovich leading the ‘Say No To Antisemitism’ campaign.
This will be a marquee event in collaboration with the MLS club, with the campaign already winning the Community Project of the Year prize at the London Football Awards.
Well, it is really great to see that at least one club is working on making a change and is improving. They may be having more problems coming their way, with the transfer ban that they might face for a year. With that being said, they will want to make the most of the resources that they have.
A new manager might come at the end of the season, depending on how Sarri finishes this term. However, if the ban does get imposed, that manager will not be able to sign new players and will have to cope up with the departure of certain stars and bringing back the loanees to the Bridge.
