Atletico Madrid vs Arsenal 26/07/18

26 July 2018

At the National Stadium in Singapore, Atletico Madrid and Arsenal will kick off their Asian tour as part of the International Champions Cup, with both teams looking to perform in their first major friendly match this summer. Los Colchoneros finished as runners-up in La Liga last season, but Diego Simeone intends to regain the league title already this season, with a few significant players expected to reinforce the team from the Spanish capital. Although they are yet to play a match since the end of the FIFA World Cup, Atletico Madrid will be a tough opponent to Unai Emery’s team who only recorded one win against a low-quality English team Boreham Wood, whom they have defeated by eight goals to nil. The Gunners are going through capital changes this summer; starting with the fact Arsene Wenger won’t lead them from the bench this season, with the aforementioned Emery should be the one to bring the famous London club to its glory days.

These two sides have played against each other this year, with Atletico Madrid eliminating the Premier League giants in the Europa League semi-finals by 2-1 on aggregate. Diego Costa, Saul Niguez, Koke, Diego Godin, Jose Giminez, Sime Vrsaljko, Thomas Lemar, Lucas Hernandez, Filipe Luis, and Antoine Griezmann have all been left out of Atletico’s squad that will participate in the Asian tour. As for Arsenal, Bernd Leno and Sokratis Papastathopoulos have joined the Gunners’ team, as well as, Mesut Ozil, Mohamed Elneny, Alex Iwobi, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Hector Bellerin, Calum Chambers, Rob Holding, Alexandre Lacazette, Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Shkodran Mustafi and Aaron Ramsey. However, Stephan Lichtsteiner and Lucas Torreira who signed for the North London side this summer won’t be in the squad.