Tottenham to play Juventus, Inter, United in 2019 International Champions Cup

Back in February, Tottenham Hotspur announced that the club is heading to Asia this summer for its annual preseason tour and friendly competition. The locations — Singapore and Shanghai — were released, but there was no indication of who Spurs might be playing.

There have also been murmurs about Spurs once again competing in the International Champions Cup, the totally legitimate preseason competition that had sent Spurs to the United States the past two seasons.

Now, it turns out that Spurs’ preseason tour and the ICC are one and the same. A season after lifting the International Champions Cup (a totally legitimate piece of silverware, thank you), Tottenham play three 2019 ICC matches in late July and early August against Juventus, Manchester United, and Inter Milan. The ICC announced its locations on Facebook Live this morning.

This is a disappointment to American Spurs fans who may have been holding out a slim home that their favorite team may be coming back States-side this summer for a brief spell, but it no doubt remains a huge deal to the large (and growing) contingent of Spurs fans in the far east.

We have no idea what kind of team Spurs will send to Asia for the ICC, but my guess is it will involve more first team regulars than last season’s squad did — the majority of Tottenham’s big stars were away at the World Cup, so we got to see players like Oliver Skipp and George Marsh make their unofficial Spurs first team debuts. This summer, the only international tournament of note is the Nations League, which wraps up in early June, so there should be plenty of time to get players like Harry Kane and Dele Alli back and into the fold for the tour.