Everton to face Juventus first in ICC

And just to look at Utd, they have. Singa All Stars, A League All Stars, Yokohama and Osaka...

Anywa, we're in this, so its all good... even if we were down the list of preferentials. Do you think our cut is the same as Real?

ICC: 7/27 Valencia-Milan in Valencia; 7/30 Chelsea-Inter in Indy; 7/31 Juventus-Everton in SF; 8/1 Real Madrid-LA in Phoenix.

ICC: 8/3 West semis (LA, Dodger Stadium); 8/4 East semis (NJ, MetLife); 8/6-7 Final 2 doubleheaders (Miami, SunLife).

Whichever way this turns out, it seems to be a particularly challenging task to put before the new manager - asking him to be showing signs of developing team shape, pattern, approach, application etc - so early in his tenure in such a potentially high profile event.

Should he, however, get his squad to perform well and to be truly competitive then all power to his elbow but should there be any embarrassments to deal with (eg Real some many years ago?) then let us not judge him too negatively at the outset.

The Final is also very close to the start of our season I believe, which I think only kicks off early because of the World Cup next Summer. Some Clubs may not have wanted the risk of jetlag

Everton were more than a match for Chelsea on BOTH occasions last season, the ONLY difference being that they had natural and in-form goalscorers - even from the bench!), whereas we had a couple of out of form and useless scorers up front. They were no better at possession than us, they were nervous at the back with our movement and if we had taken one or two of those chances that went begging, we would have beaten them.

Let's not be so negative about our boys - they play some excellent stuff at times, but oh how I wish we had that goalscorer to finish our playmaking off...

https://www.facebook.com/IntChampionsCup?fref=ts

http://internationalchampionscup.com/

A club of our squad size have to take extra care

Well done on managing to get a negative comment on what to most people is a 'good news' story.

I believe if there was ever a post on TW entitled ' Everton sign Messi' someone would come on and say he's a bit one footed.

And in addition to being ridiculously negative, Steven is also flat wrong. These games are often wildly entertaining, far more likely to end 5-3 than 1-0. And I guarantee that in the US at least, most of these games will attract capacity crowds. Real, Inter and Juve all have considerable fan bases here who never get to see them in person. They'll turn out.

Having witnessed their numerous visits over here to the US at first hand, along with attending their training sessions/build up for those matches, and speaking to the players themselves, they let us know in no uncertain terms that they certainly do not "do" friendlies!

As for the attendances, I agree with Mike #585 - I can almost guarantee that you will not see "half empty stadiums with zero real atmosphere". Although the majority of the fans attending may be of Latino origin, I can also assure you that they are probably more fanatical about football than you and I. It will be interesting to see the viewing figures for this tournament going out live to 150 + countries.

Less of the doom and gloom, leave that to RS fans with Scandinavian accents!

On the facebook page, on the first match-ups poster at the top, we have the new (designed by a blind shit-house) crest.

But scroll down to picture below (of all the club's badges) and..

Fucking amateurish and I can just hear..

"I DID send the new one as well....yeah no but when you said send...no. no no, I was told, make sure NOBODY sees the new one...and I had to send something so I thought well it won't do no harm like..." etc

I think it's a big coup by the club so why try and take the shine off it? With all due respect to those clubs, it beats the usual northwest tour against the likes of Preston and Tranmere.