OFFICIALLY OFFICIAL: Juventus is returning to the U.S. for a summer tour

Virtually solely because of the pandemic, Juventus’ preseason training has been essentially limited to being held in Italy. No preseason tours, no friendlies halfway across the world in different times zones, none of that. It’s been a whole lot of time spent at Continassa and not much else — and it’s totally made sense as the pandemic gripped the world.

This summer, it’s back to pre-pandemic times in one sense.

Juventus announced Friday that the club will be returning to the United States for a summer tour in which they will play three games within a nine-day span. Juventus will open their tour on July 22 with a fixture against Liga MX side Club Deportivo Guadalajara (aka Chivas Guadalajara) at the home of the Las Vegas Raiders in Las Vegas. Four days later, Juventus will face FC Barcelona at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas before wrapping up their stay in the U.S. with a stop in Los Angeles to face European champions Real Madrid at the Rose Bowl.

(The Rose Bowl is technically not in Los Angeles and California folks like myself know this, but let’s just call it Los Angeles because more people know that as compared to Pasadena.)

(Also, you think they’re going to stop at Alessandro Del Piero’s restaurant in Los Angeles? It’s supposed to be really, really good and you know Dad would love to see some old friends.)

These games are part of the innaugural Soccer Champions Tour, which is obviously different than the International Champions Cup that Juventus used to take part in during their trips to the U.S. before the pandemic.

Juventus will reportedly begin preseason training during the first week of July, and what the roster will look like come Max Allegri holding his first training session very much the giant elephant in the room between now and then. Another big thing to watch during preseason training will be the rehab progress that winger Federico Chiesa has made since undergoing major knee surgery in January after tearing his ACL on the Stadio Olimpico turf against Roma. By the time Juve begin preseason training, Chiesa — who has recently began running again — will be nearly six months out from training.

Juventus also reportedly plan to bring back the family match at Villar Perosa, typically held at the end of preseason, against the primavera squad at the beginning of August.

The Serie A fixture list will be released on June 24 ahead of the season beginning the weekend of Aug. 13-14, earlier than usual to accommodate the World Cup taking place in November and December.