City’s trip to Australia this month is not the first time we have travelled overseas to prepare for a Barclays Women’s Super League campaign.
We will play Leicester City at HBF Park in Perth on Wednesday 28 August, before a match against either West Ham United or Paris Saint-Germain a few days later.
It does represent our first pre-season tour abroad since 2019, when we were in the USA to play North Carolina Courage and Atletico Madrid before that campaign.
Manchester City Women will travel to Australia for the first time this August ahead of the 2024/25 season in our latest pre-season tour.
’ side will take part in the first-ever Perth International Football Cup from 21 August – 2 September along with French giants Paris Saint Germain and fellow Barclays Women’s Super League clubs West Ham United and Leicester City.
While it’s our first visit Down Under, we have enjoyed three pre-season tours before and here’s how they panned out.
2017 | Germany & France
Ahead of the Women’s Super League moving back to a calendar to match the European schedule, City headed to the continent for warm-up matches.
It began with a tough game in Germany against 1 FFC Frankfurt who had won the Champions League just two years earlier.
A youthful City team were missing many of the first-team players who would join up with the squad later following their involvement in the European Championship.
Goals from Ana-Maria Crnogorcevic, Saskia Matheis and Julia Matuschewski handed the Bundesliga side a 3-0 win.
2018 | United States
The following summer, City headed to Oregon for a training camp before moving on to Florida for the inaugral International Champions Cup that included US play-off runners-up North Carolina Courage and Paris Saint Germain.
But we began with another game against Lyon who had raided our squad in the summer, taking England internationals Lucy Bronze and Christiansen.
City, meanwhile, had new signings Caroline Weir and Gemma Bonner on the bench ready to make their debuts.
2019 | United States
We returned to America the following year as the International Champions Cup moved to North Carolina.
City faced the previous year’s winners North Carolina Courage with Lyon playing Atletico Madrid in the other semi-final.
Playing at their home ground WakeMed Soccer Park, City included new signings , Aoife Mannion, Matilde Fidalgo, Lee Geum-min and Tyler Toland in the squad.
The US side were in the middle of their season but it was the visitors who led at half-time when Georgia Stanway fired in Janine Beckie’s pass.
A nearby thunderstorm forced a second half pause with 15 minutes remaining, and when they returned Courage’s McKenzie Meehan scored with six minutes remaining before Jessica McDonald hit the winner in injury time to snatch a 2-1 win.
That meant we had another third place play-off clash, this time with Spanish champions Atletico.
It was to be a thriller at a hot and humid Cary, as the lead exchanged hands three times before City came out on top 3-2.
first half opener was cancelled out by quickfire Virginia Torrecilla and Angela Sosa goals either side of the hour mark.
Beckie equalised with six minutes remaing before Tessa Wullaert fired in the winner with the last kick of the game.
+ There are no comments
Add yours