REPORT: United States pre-season plans go down in flames for Newcastle

There were rumors a few days ago about Newcastle planning an American tour around the United States. Turns out that was indeed the correct information, but everything seems to be getting removed from the Magpies' schedule given the latest reports by The Athletic.

The sports platform is reporting, per Newcastle United correspondent Chris Waugh, that a friendly tournament going by the name of the Ohio Cup has been canceled with little to no prior notice. The competition would feature Newcastle along with fellow English club Wolverhampton Wanderers, and Spanish clubs Valencia and Villarreal.

This news will seemingly impact Newcastle’s late-June and early-July pre-season schedule and training sessions as the games were expected to take place in Columbus and Cincinnati at some point in the latter month, as The Athletic is reporting. No other publicly available plans have been released to date, with Newcastle’s preseason all up in the air awaiting confirmation of new scheduled matches to be played throughout the summer season.

Newcastle has not played any games abroad since the summer of 2019 due to the COVID pandemic. They visited China back then for the Premier League Asia Trophy, and the last time they moved to another country happened earlier this year when they visited board-linked Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

This is obviously a hit in the club’s marketing and projected expansion after their recent takeover. The new board members, owners, and all of the brass want to start pumping NUFC all around the globe, and there is certainly a huge market getting bigger by the day in the United States of America. At least for now, that market will be left unexploited. I’m not a fan of this new trendy pre-season tours and would be happy with an average, casual, focused-on-improvement period for the Magpies to take advantage of while getting ready for their most important season ever.

We’ll keep updating you on all things pre-season as new information drops.