Our time in Los Angeles in mid-July will continue pre-season preparations ahead of three matches stateside, against Club America in Las Vegas on 16 July, Charlotte FC in Charlotte on 20 July and then a London derby in Orlando as the finale of the tour on 23 July. Click for tickets for those games

Thomas Tuchel and his squad will be making the most of the fantastic facilities available in LA for plenty of intensive training to ready themselves for the 2022/23 season, and there will be other activity too.

Chelsea legend Joe Cole, three times a Premier League winner with the Blues, will have the honour of throwing the first pitch at the LA Dodgers game against Chicago Cubs on 10 July. The famous baseball team now has links with Chelsea with our new shared ownership, and the honorary first pitch is a great baseball tradition.

As one of our favourite pre-season venues, Los Angeles welcomed the Blues, Cole included, in the summer of 2006 for a long pre-season training camp prior to playing the MLS All Stars in Chicago on our way home.

A year later, we not only trained in LA, we also played two games there including one against LA Galaxy which was David Beckham’s debut for the MLS side. We also played up the coast at Stanford.

Chelsea returned to California ahead of our Double-winning season in 2009 to play a game against Inter Milan at the legendary Rose Bowl in Pasadena. That World Cup final stadium also hosted us against Liverpool in 2016. On that occasion and ahead of another Premier League-winning season, the Blues players spent days training in LA.

Roll back the years and we played games in the city in 1967 and 1977 too, and we are very much looking forward to our return.