Billy, we landed in Hong Kong a couple of hours ago. It has been an extremely difficult couple of weeks for everybody connected with the club after the passing of Diogo Jota and Andre Silva.
It was devastating for the football club and certainly even more so for his wife and family. We’re out here in Asia but we continue to stay in touch with them in terms of how we will remember them during the matches this week. As well as what we’ll look at in terms of longer, permanent tributes to them as well. A very, very difficult last few weeks. I want to say thank you to everybody across the world of sport, not just football but the world of sport, for their outreach and their support – not just at the club but certainly again most importantly, the family. As I have said previously, Diogo was a fantastic footballer but just a really terrific guy and he is deeply missed.
It’s going to be a tour like no other but a really important time as the team try to get ready for a brand-new season?
Yeah, obviously this will be a bit of a different pre-season but it is certainly pre-season and we need to get the team into a place from a fitness perspective where they can start to get some match minutes under their belt. Obviously we played Stoke in a behind-closed-doors friendly just before we took off – a couple of hours before departure – so continuing to get the match minutes and build up that fitness obviously is the most important part of why we do this.
Football is the most important part of what we’re doing. It’s an opportunity for us to see some of the new signings. We’re incredibly excited to be playing AC Milan at the Kai Tak Stadium; we’ll be the first European friendly that has been hosted at the Kai Tak Stadium here in Hong Kong, in front of a sell-out crowd, which will be fantastic. Then we go on to Yokohama and play against Yokohama Marinos in front of more than 70,000 supporters, another sell-out. So, two great games and a really exciting week ahead.
We’re back in Asia for the first time since 2023. Why is this part of the world so integral to how the team will prepare for a new season?
Pre-season is always most important, as we said, to focus on the football. But when we can find opportunities to bring all the different aspects of the club together along with the football, that’s a really important part of why we come on tour. Asia is a really important and huge fan base for the club so we’re incredibly excited to be here. Standard Chartered, this is one of their Asian headquarters, this market is incredibly important for them from their perspective. You mentioned we’ve just landed; we were on a Japan Airlines plane, so I’d like to thank them – it was a very comfortable way to get out here so a huge thank you to them, obviously they are headquartered in Japan. Kodansha is another partner of ours that is headquartered in Japan.
We’ll be doing a ton of activation across our partners, including Carlsberg, AXA etc. So, a lot that we’ll be doing here in the market and looking forward to an opportunity to try to bring the club closer to our fans. We’ve talked about this in the past, we’ve got so many fans around the world and certainly here in Asia; we’ve got almost a quarter of our social media following, more than 50 million fans who are following the club across social media. It’s an opportunity for our fans to come closer to the club and to see the club in action. Many of them will never get the chance to come to Anfield so this is our chance to bring the club to them.
