Business Standard

Lionel Messi's Inter Miami to play Japan's Vissel Kobe in pre-season tour

The pre-season tour for Lionel Messi and Inter Miami keeps growing, with the team revealing Friday that a stop in Japan has now been added to the schedule

Lionel Messi

Lionel Messi during the Leagues Cup 2023 quarterfinals match between Charlotte FC and Inter Miami (Photo: Bloomberg)

AP Fort Lauderdale

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The pre-season tour for Lionel Messi and Inter Miami keeps growing, with the team revealing Friday that a stop in Japan has now been added to the schedule.

Inter Miami will face Japanese league champion Vissel Kobe at the Japan National Stadium on February 7. That will be the fourth match of a tour that includes games in Saudi Arabia including one pitting Messi against longtime rival Cristiano Ronaldo on January 29 and February 1, and a game against a team of pro players from Hong Kong on February 4.

Among those on the Vissel Kobe roster: Andrs Iniesta, who once teamed up with Messi and fellow Inter Miami players Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba at Barcelona. Iniesta also was teammates with Busquets when Spain won the 2010 World Cup.

 

Inter Miami now has five preseason matches announced; there are four on the Saudi Arabia-Hong Kong-Japan trip and another in El Salvador on January 19.

The team will begin preseason training in early January and the Major League Soccer regular season is set to begin in February.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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First Published: Dec 15 2023 | 11:32 PM IST

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