AC Milan in Pittsburgh August 4th?

I'm not sure where this rumor is heading, but after posting the information earlier today about AC Milan's matches against Chelsea in Miami and Real Madrid in New York, I came across this posting on the team website:

"We’ll play Chelsea on 28 July in Miami – announced Adriano Galliani today – then on 4 August in Pittsburg, we’ll play against another team yet to be decided and we’ll have a friendly against Real Madrid on 8 August in New York in the marvelous New York Yankee stadium”.

Pittsburgh? Seriously? I checked with my friend who works in sports in Pittsburgh, he has heard nothing of this rumor. I called over to PNC Park and the Pirates are on the road that day but have a home game on August 6th. I called over to Heinz Field and they are scheduled to have a women's football game that day, which would surely be rescheduled if the rumor was true. I doubt a team as big as AC Milan would play at the Riverhounds home of Highmark Stadium which has 5,000 seats.

As of right now this looks like something lost in translation, however we are working our sources and will keep you posted because it makes perfect sense that AC Milan would add a third date on their US Tour.

OFFICIAL: Real Madrid v AC Milan, NYC Aug 8

We reported the rumor early last week that Real Madrid and AC Milan would face off at Yankee Stadium on August 8th as part of the World Football Challenge; that news was made official today. AC Milan director Umberto Gandini posted this on Twitter this morning:

"AC Milan and Real Madrid will play a friendly match on August 8 at Yankee Stadium in NYC. Won 16 Champions titles combined"

He went on to confirm that they will also be playing 2012 Champions League winners Chelsea at Sun Life Stadium in Miami on July 28th, but the majority of the population knew this for the last few weeks.

All the ticket information, dates, and locations for these and 40 other summer friendlies in North America can be found on our "2012 Summer Friendly" tab on our homepage.

Stoke City and Nottingham Forest in Orlando

Orlando City officials will announce later this morning that the team will play host to the oldest club in the Premier League, Stoke City F.C. and 2-time former European Cup winners Nottingham Forest in July in a pair of friendlies at the Citrus Bowl. Both matches will be on Saturdays, which should help attendance, with Nottingham Forest on July 21st and Stoke City on July 28th.

2012 marks the second season that two Football Association teams from England are making the trip to "the city beautiful" to take on Orlando City who currently sit atop the USL PRO standings. Last year the Lions hosted Premier League sides Newcastle United and the Bolton Wanderers, with the Newcastle match drawing just under 11,000 to the Citrus Bowl.

We had reported two months ago that it looked like Stoke was a lock to play in Orlando this summer, the team had said they would be setting up training camp in the area and Orlando City's president, Phil Rawlins, is also on the board of directors at Stoke. Nottingham Forest was a bit of a surprise as a lot of people had assumed Swansea City would add another match to their tour and come down to Orlando. However, an article last week on a Forest supporters site quoted the coach as saying that they were going to play a match against Orlando and hopefully a second match against the Charleston Battery. Both teams will set up shop in town for two weeks as part of their tours, with Stoke having friendlies at Columbus and Kansas City in addition to Orlando.

MLS Expansion: Miami

Downtown Miami Skyline
(Courtesy of Destionation360.com)

With all the Major League Soccer expansion articles I have been writing over the last few weeks (Atlanta, Charlotte, Orlando) you knew I would eventually get to Miami.

The gateway to South  & Central America and the Caribbean, Miami has the cultural diversity to make an expansion franchise a truly unique experience.

I'm not going to get into the whole, MLS failed in Miami before discussion, anyone with half a brain understands the league that contracted in 2001 is not the same as it is today. I'm sure if you told someone back in 2001 that Portland would have a franchise in 10 years they would think you were crazy too, again the league has changed in a decade. Instead I am going to apply the 3 MLS standard criteria for expansion (fan support, stadium, and ownership) to Miami and see where they fall in the race for an expansion franchise.

World Soccer Masters Tour

We had mentioned in some of our previous 2012 US summer friendly articles that Florida would not be absent from the list of matches for long. Such was the case last week when we confirmed the Chelsea v AC Milan match scheduled for FedEx Field in Washington was getting moved to Miami on July 24th. Now we can confirm another rumor that had been floating around the last few weeks, the World Soccer Masters Tour will stop in Miami on June 23rd.

We first heard about this two weeks ago from some European message boards and thought nothing of it mainly because it just said Lionel Messi was trying to organize a summer tour. Juan Arango at the Miami Examiner broke the story on Sunday that indeed an exhibition under the title "World Soccer Masters Tour" would be held at Sun Life Stadium outside of Miami on June 23rd. If this sounds somewhat familiar to you it is probably because you remember Pele's "World Cup of Masters" that pulled into Miami back in 1991.