Tottenham Hotspur are considering further capitalizing on head coach Ange Postecoglou’s popularity in Australia by scheduling a post-season trip to Melbourne for a club friendly, according to the Standard. Dan Kilpatrick writes this plan is only now being furthered after Spurs’ elimination from the FA Cup.
The Premier League season ends on May 19, and the FA Cup final is scheduled for May 25, so presumably Tottenham were holding off on making concrete plans until they knew whether they’d be participating in the final or not. Spurs will only play 41 matches this season, the lowest number of games in recent memory, since they were not participants in European competition this season and were drummed out of both cups in the early rounds.
It’s not unprecedented to do a short post-season tour, though it’s a bit unusual. Spurs traveled to Malaysia and Sydney back in 2015 and to Hong Kong after the 2016-17 season. There may be other examples I’m not thinking of at the moment also. However, it might not be the most popular move — EURO 2024 kicks off on June 14, and jetting off to Australia in late May means any European internationals expecting to participate will not have much of a break this summer.
That said, a trip to Oz would likely be extremely popular with Australian football fans in the continually emerging Aussie market. Postecoglou is the most prominent football manager to come out of Australia, and I don’t think it’d be too difficult to get fans to come out to watch his club play. Melbourne Cricket Ground seats 100k fans; I don’t know how feasible it’d be to fill that stadium for a late May friendly, but it also doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility either.