The Olympics should be the pinnacle of an athlete’s career. Yet scratch beneath the surface and the physical toll is often accompanied by an emotional comedown known as the ‘post-Olympic blues’.

That is an experience which unites swimmer Michael Phelps — the most decorated Olympian with 28 medals, gymnast Simone Biles with seven medals, Allison Schmitt and Adam Peaty, who won 10 and five pool medals respectively. Between them, they boast 34 Olympic golds.

Great Britain’s 800m runner Keely Hodgkinson and U.S. sprinter Noah Lyles are examples of athletes at their peak who have spoken of post-Olympic comedowns.

Dr Karen Howells, an academic and sports psychologist, explains that athletes first coined the term ‘post-Olympic blues’. “The blues undermined the seriousness,” she says. “The problem with using the word ‘depression’ is it is a mental illness, diagnosed by clinical psychologists and psychiatrists. As a researcher and applied sports psychologist, I’m not qualified to diagnose.”

Jessica Bartley, senior director of psychological services for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC), explains the ‘blues’ as a range of emotions.

“We try to make it broad because it’s not always ‘blues’. I don’t want to alienate athletes who aren’t feeling sad. If they’re feeling anxious, the blues often capture a lot of them, but it’s not everyone’s experience.

“Other athletes say, ‘I had the perfect experience, I did everything that I wanted to.’ It’s complicated, but we try to be as open as possible, as often as possible.”

It is impossible to accurately state how many athletes experience this. Although there is academic research, there is no standardised questionnaire. Not all athletes are prepared to speak about their emotions or engage in interventions.

Howells will not put a number on it because she hasn’t carried out a prevalence survey, but says she has “not yet met an Olympian who hasn’t experienced” the post-Olympic blues.

A 2023 study of 49 Danish Olympians and Paralympians found 27 per cent had below-average well-being or moderate-to-severe depression. For athletes who achieved their goals, as many had above-average well-being as below average (40 per cent).

There are typical symptoms. “The most helpful way is to recognise deviations from their baseline,” says Dr Cody Commander, the Team USA mental health officer for the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics. “Were they gregarious and outgoing and now they’re not?

“Appetite and sleep are the first few things that can change. You’re eating and sleeping more or less. You’re also looking to see if there’s any social withdrawal. That is more common for elite athletes now — not responding to text messages, emails and calls. They can’t deal with the mental energy needed to talk to everyone about it.”

Adam Peaty at the Tokyo Olympics (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)

Danielle Adams Norenberg, head of psychology at the UK Sports Institute and Team GB psychologist references “maladaptive responses” post-Games. These include a dependence on alcohol and overtraining among other self-destructive behaviours, as athletes try to fill the void.

Commander describes “a crash of emotions afterwards”. He describes an inevitability “because it’s more of a build-up over time. They’re training for years versus just a season and it’s a bigger stage. Financially, this may be a great source of potential income. There is a lot of expectation and pressure.

“It’s more about making a map of how to get to a destination. Once you get there, it’s like, ‘Now what?’ They’re in a period with no plans and no spectators and they don’t know what to do. Elite athletes are used to having each minute planned every day for years.

“When there’s no plan, it’s the feeling of ‘I’m lost’. It’s very different from training. That difference is what they have a hard time adjusting to — the freedom can feel more awkward.

Howells explains that most people can relate to the blues. “It’s normal that when we build up to something, and then it’s over, we are going to feel lost and upset,” she says. “There may be anger, frustration, irritation”.

Recent Olympic cycles have seen changed approaches to managing athletes’ emotional well-being, with performance now considering mental health and the post-Olympic experience, and countries taking measures to prepare athletes for life post-Games.

“We have a team of 15 that focus on mental health and mental performance,” Bartley says. We’re meeting regularly with Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Denmark and the Netherlands.”

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has started to build infrastructure which countries use and there are shared initiatives. “There are over 150 mental health providers at the Games from different countries.” All the nations met pre-Games to pool resources and share strategies. Since Tokyo, Team USA has implemented a new process, screening first-time athletes via questionnaires.

“When an athlete makes the team, we immediately talk about resources, whether that’s mental health or medicine, career services, retirement services, how to transition out of sport. We’ve tried to normalise and make the transition piece a part of the conversation early. Throughout their career, we’re talking about it during what we call an ‘elite athlete health profile’.

“We talk to them annually, doing physical and mental health screenings. Right before the Games, we’re screening every athlete. We’ve met with every Olympic and Paralympic athlete, every alternate, training partners — everybody who’s in the mix for Team USA.

“Then we’ll follow up post-Games. We’ve developed ‘navigating the Olympic blues’ and navigating the emotions. We have process groups and skills groups, then we have a really cool experience.” All U.S. Olympians and Paralympians visit the White House and meet the President, and there are counsellors available throughout the week post-Games.

US Olympians meet President Joe Biden in 2022 (Patrick Smith/Getty Images for USOPC)

For Team GB, the focus is on performance decompression. A six-stage model designed by the British Institute of Sport before the Tokyo Games applied knowledge and research from the military, the Red Cross and their own practical experience to help prepare athletes for life after the Games.

It consists of four phases: First, a ‘hot debrief’, almost immediately post-competition. Second is ‘time zero’, athletes are encouraged to take a break and engage with the present. The third phase is ‘process the emotion’, a psychological debrief to discuss the emotional experience of the Games. Finally, there is a performance debrief.

“In those pre-stages, we’ll talk to them about the importance of performance decompression,” says Adams Norenberg. “We will drip-feed the conversation all the way through. We might say, ‘When might you want to plan your post-Games period?’

“They’ve got really good performance decompression plans, they know when they’re going to take a break and, ideally, they know when they’re going to have that process the emotion conversation. It’s all booked in before the Games start.

“In some areas of the military, upon returning home, there’s a stop-off before, where individuals are supported to make sense of their experience. We knew that talking it through, understanding and acknowledging emotions that might have come up for them is important before jumping straight in to find life again.

“The research from the Red Cross, about support for hostages returning home, gave us insight into how a stage three brief, where emotions are understood, could look”.

But there is a balance required between focusing on the post-Games experience and potentially problematic emotions, and prioritising competition.

“You want to think about it before the Games, but not right before,” says Commander. “Maybe six months out. So afterwards, if it goes well, here’s my plan. If it doesn’t go well, here’s my plan B. I’m thinking about it ahead of time but now I have a plan so I’m not thinking about it anymore. I’m just focused on my training and everything else.”

For Bartley and the USOPC, as with Team GB, athletes are given ownership. “We start when they’re ready. Even when we’re doing an athlete orientation or introducing our services, we’ll tell them there’s going to be a lot of emotions that come up. We’re not going to start talking at them about what to expect. We let them know we’re here and say, ‘When you’re ready, let us know’.”

Academics first identified the ‘blues’ decades ago. In a 1998 study of 18 Australian Olympic gold medallists, competing across several sports at Games between 1984 and 1992, only four athletes described their experiences as completely positive. Six, however, cited burnout and a lack of support. Athletes were “lacking guidelines for being a gold medallist”.

A study of 61 Israeli athletes and coaches at the 2012 London Games found one in five spoke with others afterwards — most ignored their feelings or isolated themselves. A 2021 paper, which interviewed 18 Australian Olympians after the Rio 2016 games said: “national system stressors, including organisational restructures, coaching changes and funding cuts, were impediments to athlete well-being”.

In 2018, Howells and Mathijs Lucassen interviewed four British Olympians. They concluded that “negative emotions are a normal response to returning home but athletes don’t expect it to affect them, they are incapable of focusing beyond the Games before they happen and get rollicked by a return to normality. They struggle being away from other athletes with relatable experiences.”

Holly Bradshaw, a pole vault bronze medallist, was a participant. In 2022, Bradshaw became “researcher as participant” alongside Howells and Lucassen. She facilitated four focus groups with 14 British Olympians across various sports, featuring medallists and non-medallists. Researchers were surprised by how much athletes preferred focus groups.

“We thought that having Holly run them would enable the Olympians to be more open. We hadn’t realised how open they were going to be.

“What came out very clearly was a real antagonism and mistrust towards sports psychologists,” she says. Athletes felt they might relay information to the coach which made them look ‘weak’ or cost them their place on the team. “Sports psychologists didn’t really get it.” Athletes “wanted to be supported through the post-Olympic blues by somebody who’d been through it,” Howells says.

Holly Bradshaw competing at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 (Michael Steele/Getty Images)

The way forward is nuanced, Howells believes: “It is more complicated than we thought. We would be foolish not to listen to the athletes”. She says peer support should complement, not replace, sports psychology.

“Just because you’ve been through it, it doesn’t mean that you are in the best position to help somebody. To get a team of sports psychologists to support Olympians afterwards is easy. It’s much harder to work a mentorship scheme.”

Academia may try to shift the dial from encouraging change to initiating it more formally. In 2020, experts proposed that national governing bodies view the Games as a five-year cycle, with a clearly defined support system for 12 months post-Games. Formalised mental health care teams and a specific mental health officer, improving athlete education and simplifying screening processes were further recommendations.

“There are two areas at which we can address the blues,” says Howells. “The first is pre-Games, with psychoeducation. That’s the first thing that athletes were clear about and that aligned with our own expectations: the more that you know, the better equipped you are to cope.”

Stigma is gradually reducing as high-profile athletes open up publicly. The pressure, expectation, the heralding of exceptional athletes as heroes and superhuman and the ensuing celebrity status are all factors. It does not encourage athletes to be human.

A 2023 paper on Olympic judokas (judo) explained the identity crises athletes face as a result of hyper-fixation on performance, leaving their non-sporting personalities underdeveloped. In a 2018 paper, Howells wrote that athletes with a greater “myopic” performance focus are more at risk of the ‘blues’.

“At elite sport level, it is common for competitors to have this very high athletic identity. That is all they are,” says Howells. “They’ve sacrificed every other aspect of their identity for the purpose of being an Olympian. Many have an Olympic rings tattoo; they are branding themselves, their bodies, as an Olympian”.

(Buda Mendes/Getty Images)

Bartley, who has worked with the USOPC since 2012, is confident that discussing mental health can provide “an edge” in performance.

“The biggest difference I’ve seen (over that time) is that so many notable athletes have spoken out about their mental health that it’s starting to destigmatise it a lot,” she says. “It’s helping future athletes or even athletes now to understand that it’s OK to talk about mental health and to use these resources.”

A 2015 report by Tanni Grey-Thompson, who won 16 Paralympic medals with Team GB, found that “mental health and well-being is a major concern in British performance sport and should be treated accordingly”.

Howells points to it as a turning point in reducing stigma. “There is certainly a very dark side to elite sport,” she says, but remains positive about affecting change.

“Change doesn’t happen quickly, the stigma is still there. It takes a long time to bring about attitudinal change, but we’re getting there.”

(Header photos: Getty Images)

Andre Onana returned to competitive football this weekend in the Community Shield against Manchester City, with his side losing on penalties at Wembley.

Last season it emerged the Manchester United goalkeeper uses Vaseline on his gloves, which raised several other questions for me. What other substances do we ’keepers put on our gloves to try to gain an advantage? Is there anything in doing so that violates the laws of the game?

I knew I needed help from someone with better knowledge of the laws of the game than me. Thankfully, over my playing career I was fortunate to build up enough goodwill with a few professional referees that I was able to enlist one of them — Fredrik Klitte, who has been a ref for close to 25 years in Sweden, including the last decade at the top level.

“It’s legal for a goalkeeper to use Vaseline from a referee’s point of view, as long as the rule book doesn’t say otherwise, which it doesn’t today,” Klitte said.

When I asked him if he had ever encountered a goalkeeper trying to use any substances on their gloves before, his answer was a firm “no.” He did admit, however, that it could have happened without him knowing. “The referee isn’t required to check a goalkeeper’s gloves in the same way they are supposed to check a player’s studs or shin guards before a match, so it’s possible,” he said.

Klitte went on to explain there is a line in the rule book that states the referee does have the option to show a yellow card for unsportsmanlike behaviour if they discover a goalkeeper has handball players’ resin (which affords greater grip) on their gloves, for example. But that is rarely, if ever, enforced. “Then you can interpret it as a goalkeeper using incorrect equipment that must then be corrected,” he said. “However, you probably still don’t have support for that, due to the way the rule is currently written.”

Before I let him go, I asked Klitte one more time just to confirm, “So, technically speaking, a goalkeeper could use whatever they wanted on their gloves to try to improve their grip?”.

“Yes,” he said confidently. “There is nothing in the laws today that say otherwise.”

Vaseline sighted at a Premier League game (Michael Regan/Getty Images)

So with that established, it was time to experiment.

I wanted to test things that would be practical and we could realistically see a goalkeeper use. That means substances that wouldn’t totally destroy the gloves after one use. Therefore, even though I could fathom that handball resin, pine tar, or Stickum (a substance that was used for years in the NFL to assist players in hanging onto or catching the ball before being banned in 1981) would improve a goalkeeper’s grip, at least temporarily, they would almost certainly destroy the pair of gloves involved in the process and not be worth testing.

While I was able to find several different recommendations from fellow goalkeepers who swear by little tricks of the trade to improve their grip, including honey, maple syrup, sugary sports drinks and even homemade pastes, three products were mentioned more often than any others: GloveGlu — a product specifically created for goalkeeper gloves to help improve grip — shaving cream and hair spray. These were the three I knew I needed to try.

The next day, before training with the club where I’m goalkeepers coach, Angelholms FF in the Swedish third division, I ran a few errands around town and picked up a bottle of GloveGlu from the sporting-goods store and a bottle of shaving cream and hair spray from the supermarket. In theory, I could understand why each of these products would work and was excited to try them out for myself to see if there might be something out there better suited for a goalkeeper’s gloves than Vaseline.

When our ’keepers Robin Streifert and Lukas Bornandersson arrived at the training facility, I informed them we had an assignment in training that day: to test a few products and see if any of them would improve our grip on the ball, however, I waited to inform them exactly what it was that we would be testing. The only information I gave them was to bring an extra pair of gloves out to the pitch with them.

There was a consensus the GloveGlu would work, since it was made specifically for goalkeeper gloves, but they were highly doubtful about the shaving cream and hair spray.

Since Robin already had a lot of experience with using Vaseline on his gloves, consistently employing it in both training and matches, I thought he would be the perfect candidate to compare it with the effects of GloveGlu. Lukas on the other hand was still relatively new to the Vaseline idea and was a bit sceptical. Therefore, I wanted him to test it for the first time and see if his experience was anything like Robin’s.

I, on the other hand, would first try out the shaving cream and the hair spray. Then, if I thought it either worth introducing to the training session with Robin and Lukas, we would do so.

When the goalkeepers were done with their warm-up, Robin came up to me and grabbed the GloveGlu, Lukas took the Vaseline and they started to apply them to their gloves.

Robin’s gloves had some age to them, and it had been a while since they had been used, but the GloveGlu suddenly gave them some new life. As Robin clapped his palms together and felt the stickiness of the spray start to have an effect, he nodded his head. “This stuff might actually work,” he said.

The grip initially proved to be good, certainly much better than it would have been without GloveGlu. It took a pair of old gloves that he would never have trusted for a game and made them usable again. However, despite the positive first impressions, the stickiness didn’t last very long.

GloveGlu was effective, but wore off quickly (Matt Pyzdrowski/The Athletic)

It was after just a few rounds of our shooting session when Robin noticed the gloves started to feel silky smooth. Balls that initially were lodging snugly into his gloves, started to become more difficult to catch and often bounced back out and into play. At that point, all he had to do was go and reapply the GloveGlu for it to become effective again, but I could sense his frustration each time he had to do that throughout the training.

Though Robin’s first impressions of GloveGlu were positive, Lukas, on the other hand, was doubtful about the impact Vaseline was going to have almost immediately.

As he bounced the ball up and down and caught it over and over, he shook his head. “It feels like there isn’t an ounce of grip!”, he shouted. “I don’t know how you guys think this is any good!”.

Both Robin and I looked at each other and laughed. It was like we already knew what was going to happen.

After all, when French club Bordeaux’s Swedish goalkeeper Karl-Johan Johnsson introduced the stuff to Robin almost a year ago, he went through the same progression himself. First there is scepticism and doubt, then, intrigue and wonder start to take hold, and by the end of training, nearly every goalkeeper who has ever tried the stuff ends up loving it.

Unsurprisingly, this is exactly what happened with Lukas.

When the ball started smacking safely into his gloves over and over again, it brought a big smile to his face. When he went over to the tub of Vaseline after about 20 to 25 minutes of training and grabbed another glob for the palms of his gloves, Robin and I knew he was hooked.

“OK, OK, you guys were right, this really does work well!”, Lukas said with enthusiasm in his voice.

Toward the end of training, I decided it was time to give the other two products a try.

When I read about shaving cream and hair spray online, those who used them believed they were most effective a few minutes after application. So as Robin and Lukas had a water break and we took a little pause in our session, I took out two sets of gloves and applied shaving cream to one pair, hair spray to the other, and then let them rest, palms up, next to the goal.

While there wasn’t that much I needed to do with the pair that had hair spray on, other than let them dry and rest, I did read that the pair with shaving cream on needed a little more attention. Rather than rubbing the shaving cream into the palm directly, like you would do with Vaseline, I had read it was best to squirt a generous amount onto the palm and then wait to rub it into the latex just before use.

Matt’s gloves after the initial application of shaving cream (Matt Pyzdrowski/The Athletic)

When I went over to the gloves during our next pause in training to check on their progress, it didn’t take long for me to realise that the hair spray wasn’t going to have any effect whatsoever. Though it did appear to create a sticky substance on the palms of the gloves, after just one catch of the ball the effect had entirely worn off and actually left a residue on the palms of my glove which became incredibly slippery.

Though I still decided to give hair spray a shot and had Robin and Lukas pepper me with a few shots, it was clear that catching the ball was going to be an incredibly difficult task. There was no need to explore hair spray any further. It wasn’t going to work.

After taking off my hair-sprayed gloves, I picked up my other pair that had shaving cream on them, put them on, and began to rub the shaving cream into the palms of my gloves until it was absorbed into the latex.

Matt’s gloves after rubbing the shaving cream into the palms a few minutes later (Matt Pyzdrowski/The Athletic)

When I started rubbing my palms together and felt the stickiness take hold, I suspected it was going to work as intended. The palms of the gloves remained moist but also felt a bit sticky after the shaving cream had dried, and after a few bounces of the ball on the grass, my confidence in it grew. I asked Robin and Lukas to come over so I could throw some shaving cream onto their gloves.

Robin, whose gloves were a little older and more broken down than Lukas’ pair, didn’t feel like there was much of an impact. However, when Lukas jumped in goal and started gripping shot after shot, his grin went from ear to ear.

“I don’t know what it is, if it’s mental or if I’m just having a good day, but it really does feel like it works!”, he shouted.

It may sound strange at first that shaving cream could improve the grip of your goalkeeper gloves, but when you understand how latex works, it makes sense.

Without getting too technical, latex is a foam. It is made up of thousands of tiny holes, much like a kitchen sponge. When the materials that make those tiny holes are dry, the latex becomes hard and brittle. When they are wet, the holes expand and the material becomes softer — again, like a sponge. So by adding shaving cream, you are ultimately helping keep the latex moist and sticky and allowing it to do what it was made to do in this case: grip the football.

After facing a few more shots, Robin, Lukas and I sat down next to the goal to discuss our findings.

We quickly agreed that although there was a positive effect to using shaving cream, it wasn’t as effective as Vaseline or GloveGlu and it was hard for us to imagine it would have the same effect as Vaseline in wet weather (Vaseline is designed to moisturize the latex, but also act as a repellent to prevent dirt and grime from covering the palms of your gloves when it rains).

Plus, in a game situation, when your time is so limited, you would never have enough of a break in play to go to the side of the goal and apply it effectively, whereas GloveGlu and Vaseline were much easier to apply quickly and see immediate results.

Robin, right, and Lukas discussing their experiments (Cherie Mårtensson/Ängelholms FF)

It’s been almost a year since Robin first started using Vaseline, and though it’s still an important part of his routine, his use of it has slightly changed. He found out first-hand that the negative side of using Vaseline every day is that it can damage the latex on your gloves and reduce their durability. Though Vaseline is initially moist when you apply it, when it dries out, your gloves are in danger because the Vaseline starts to be absorbed into the pores of the latex, dries it out, and can crack the gloves.

“At the beginning, I was putting Vaseline on my gloves every day, but it didn’t take long for me to realise that it wasn’t sustainable in the long run because I was going through a new pair of gloves every other week,” he said.

He would go on to explain, however, that despite Vaseline being tough on the durability of his gloves, throwing some of it on an old pair of gloves did seem to bring some life back to them. Which was something Lukas could also confirm after his own experience with the stuff.

“I have an old pair that I use now and again in training when it rains and I’m worried my grip will be impacted because of it,” he said. “I throw a dab of Vaseline on them and suddenly they have good grip again. I noticed that today as well. I was unsure what would happen since I was using an old pair of gloves I hadn’t used in a few months, but I was blown away by the results. I haven’t had that good of a grip in my gloves in a long time.”

Despite the negative impact Vaseline can have on the durability of his gloves, Robin did say he still prefers it to GloveGlu because he feels the effect from it lasts longer and gives a more “stable” feeling. However, he did admit GloveGlu works better in dry weather (which is something that can be a problem with Vaseline) and doesn’t damage the latex as much.

Some goalkeepers still stick to using their own saliva (ANP via Getty Images)

Every athlete is always looking for new and innovative ways to uncover marginal gains, and professional goalkeepers adding Vaseline to their gloves is just the latest example of that.

Though the security and trust Vaseline can provide is an incredibly important feeling for every goalkeeper, all of us agreed that it shouldn’t be used with the expectation that it’s suddenly going to fix all your problems on the pitch. It doesn’t matter how much of it you smear on your gloves, it can’t hide poor technique. That’s why it is important to perfect your technique first, then use Vaseline, GloveGlu, or another similar product as an added tool down the line if you feel it’s needed.

Most professional goalkeepers have a glove sponsorship and brands will send them new pairs pretty much whenever they ask for them. So clearly, they aren’t worried about their gloves’ durability or about what happens to them after using Vaseline.

That’s the biggest reason that we all agreed younger goalkeepers and amateurs might be wise to hold off on using Vaseline on that brand-new pair of gloves and instead save it for a rainy day or when they get a bit old and worn and need a new lease on life.

(Top photo: Charlotte Wilson/Offside via Getty Images)

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.

Erling Haaland runs out at Yankee Stadium last month (Stephen Nadler/ISI Photos/Getty Images)

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.”

Barcelona and AC Milan played in Baltimore, Maryland, on August 6 (Samuel Corum/AFP via Getty Images)

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.

(Left to right) Josh Kroenke, Kupp, Arteta, McVay, Odegaard and Stan Kroenke on July 26 (Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

GO DEEPER

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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.

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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.

Manchester United and Liverpool walk out in Columbia, South Carolina (Grant Halverson/Getty Images)

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)