Tottenham to play Arsenal and Chelsea in preseason benefit tournament

Due to obvious reasons, Tottenham Hotspur will not be holding an overseas preseason tournament like they have in the pre-COVID Before Times. However, that’s not to say there won’t still be fun preseason matches to watch, they’ll just be done within the UK.

Today, Tottenham announced that it will participate in a preseason exhibition tournament against London rivals Chelsea and Arsenal that will benefit a local mental health charity.

Dubbed The Mind Series, half of the proceeds from this series of preseason matches will benefit Mind, a UK-based mental health charity, and the remaining half split between the three club’s foundations. The matches will take place in August.

• Arsenal v Chelsea: Sunday, Aug. 1, 3 pm UK (10 am USA), Emirates Stadium
• Chelsea v Tottenham Hotspur: Wednesday, Aug. 4, 7:45 pm UK (2:45 pm USA), Stamford Bridge
• Tottenham Hotspur v Arsenal: Sunday, August 8, 2 pm UK (9 am USA), Tottenham Hotspur Stadium

There isn’t any information yet as to how tickets will work, max capacity of the various stadiums, or how/whether it will be available to watch on television or online, but Spurs’ release said those details will be released “in due course.” If I had to guess, for the benefit of our American viewership, I would suggest that it’s highly likely it will be streamed on the in-house streaming platforms of the various clubs, but again we’ll have to wait and see.

These are three big time club rivals facing each other, but as it’s a friendly match I wouldn’t expect to see fireworks like what we often see when they play each other in the Premier League. And that’s okay. These are all about fitness anyway.

The Premier League will kick off on August 13 with a match between newly promoted Brentford and Arsenal, which means that these three matches are likely going to be the final tune-ups before the start of the new season. There may be a few other friendlies ahead of the Mind Series, though we’ll have to wait and see whether they are publicly available or if they will be held behind closed doors, which Spurs has been wont to do in recent preseasons. Possibly we won’t know that until we, y’know, get a manager hired.

Mind is the largest mental health charity in the UK, and the destigmatization of, and prioritization of mental health services has been prioritized, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns. It’s a good cause, and a wonderful way to support a health initiative that doesn’t get enough attention.