Arsenal will play Tottenham in a pre-season friendly in Hong Kong, the first North London derby to be held outside the United Kingdom, the clubs said Monday, while Liverpool will meet AC Milan.
The London rivals will clash at the southern Chinese city’s new 50,000-capacity Kai Tak Stadium on July 31, just over two weeks before the start of the Premier League season.
Former Spurs and England defender Ledley King said it would give Hong Kong fans “a glimpse of what a North London derby is like”.
“We’re obviously neighbours back home so it’s going to be strange to come all the way across the other side of the world to play your neighbours, but it’s fantastic for the fans in Asia,” he said.
“It’s a pre-season game, but there’s no friendlies when these two teams play each other,” he added.
Liverpool will play Serie A giants Milan at the same stadium on July 26.
It will be a re-run of the classic 2005 Champions League final, which the Reds won on penalties after being 3-0 down at half-time.
Arne Slot’s Liverpool are likely to head to Hong Kong as Premier League champions — they are currently 12 points clear with nine games left.
After Hong Kong, Liverpool will travel to Japan for the first time during pre-season, the club said, without giving dates.
Hong Kong officially opened a major US$3.85 billion sports park this month with the futuristic Kai Tak Stadium as its centrepiece of it.
The stadium saw its first major event at the weekend when it hosted the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens, with more than 110,000 spectators attending over three days.
It is all part of efforts to restore the city’s image, which took a battering after political protests and a Beijing-imposed national security law.
Visitor numbers to Hong Kong also plummeted during almost three years of strict Covid curbs and have only recently begun to recover.
