Yahoo Sports How to get tickets and what to know as Real Madrid, Chelsea prepare for Charlotte matchup
A month after Charlotte played host to a pair of Copa America games, including a tense and nearly sold-out semifinal between Colombia and Uruguay, it will once again serve as the venue for a massive soccer matchup.
Chelsea and Real Madrid will finish their preseason U.S. tours with a match at Bank of America Stadium on Tuesday. The two huge clubs, from England and Spain respectively, will draw global audiences, continuing a summer in which the Queen City has hosted plenty of soccer events.
Chelsea returns to North Carolina for the third year in a row and to Charlotte for the third time in club history, while Real Madrid will make its first-ever stop in the Queen City during a U.S. tour. Head coach Carlo Ancelotti coached a preseason friendly in Charlotte while with Bayern Munich in 2016.
“We don’t have the possibility to look around because we arrive at the hotel, train, and back to the hotel,” Ancelotti said after Real Madrid’s training session at Atrium Health Performance Park, Charlotte FC’s training facility, on Sunday. “I know Charlotte is a fantastic place and I would like in the future to spend some time here on holiday.”
Real Madrid fell to Spanish rivals Barcelona in its first friendly on U.S. soil on Saturday in New Jersey while Chelsea have won once, tied once and lost a pair of games during its long preseason tour in America over the last couple of weeks.
“The procedure here in USA, the reason is (for) the team to play difficult games,” Ancelotti said. “We have a lot of support here in USA and we are happy to be there with them.”
While both Chelsea and Real Madrid have plenty of honors and trophies, Real Madrid has had more recent success. The reigning European Champions League and La Liga champion will have plenty of players who played a large part in those successes available Tuesday.
Former Ballon d’Or winner Luka Modric, Brazilian winger Vinicius Jr. and Belgian goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, who formerly played for Chelsea, are some of the talented players available for Los Blancos, who will be without England midfielder Jude Bellingham.
Meanwhile, Chelsea boasts a variety of young talent, including Moises Caicedo, Wesley Fofana and Noni Madueke, mixed with more experienced players such as Raheem Sterling and Tosin Adarabioyo. But they’ll also be without an English international in talisman Cole Palmer.
“They invested a lot, I think they have a good squad with (young) players. They have a young manager,” Ancelotti said of his old club, which he last coached in 2011. “I think they need to be a little bit patient.”
There will be plenty of quality on display for both teams as they ramp up their preseason preparations with their domestic seasons quickly approaching. Former England international and Chelsea legend Gary Cahill broke down the matchup last month in an interview with The Charlotte Observer.
“That game is gonna be a brilliant game,” Cahill said in July. “I can’t wait to watch it from a fan’s point of view. It’s definitely going to be one of them where you kind of get around the stadium and think, ‘I wish I was still playing here.’”
How to get tickets
Tickets for the friendly between Chelsea and Real Madrid can be purchased on Ticketmaster.
Ticket prices for the upper bowl of Bank of America Stadium range from $73 to $130, while tickets closer to the field, almost all of which are resale tickets, range from about $150 to $400.
The game will be streamed on ESPN+.
