Roma pulls out of Singapore Festival of Football, replaced by Lion City Sailors

SINGAPORE — Singapore Premier League club Lion City Sailors will replace AS Roma as opponents for English Premier League side Tottenham Hotspur in their Festival of Football by CDG Zig pre-season friendly at National Stadium on 26 July.

This comes after the Italian club pulled out of their Asia tour to Singapore and South Korea, reportedly due to missed payments from the organisers for the South Korean leg.

Ticket holders with seats in the Roma section for the match will be automatically refunded. Other existing match tickets remain valid, but ticket holders can request a refund at by 12 noon on 21 July.

"Playing against a top team such as Tottenham will provide us an opportunity to better prepare for the rigours of the upcoming AFC Champion League,” Sailors chairman Forrest Li in a media release on Wednesday (12 July).

"Spurs are a well-supported club in Singapore and we expect many of their fans to turn up. We hope the match will provide Spurs' fans an exposure to local football and spark some interest in our local football league."

Background to the Roma withdrawal

The friendly is part of the Festival of Football event, which is set to feature top European football clubs in pre-season games at the National Stadium. Following the Spurs vs Sailors match are two more ties at the same venue: Liverpool vs Leicester City (30 July) and Liverpool vs Bayern Munich (3 August).

The Gazzetta dello Sport, Italy's sports daily newspaper, had reported last week that Roma - led by Jose Mourinho - were set to cancel their entire Asia trip. They will reportedly head instead to Algarve in Portugal, where they will undergo a training camp, similar to what they had done in the past two seasons.

The Korea Herald had also reported on 30 June that the Italian club's summer exhibition tour matches in South Korea against EPL side Wolverhampton Wanderers and K-League 1 side Incheon United have been cancelled due to unmet financial obligations.

Event promoter Stadium X claimed that its agreement with the clubs only required an advance payment accounting for 70 per cent of the fee by the end of June, with the remaining 30 per cent to be paid after the matches. The company said that both Roma and Wolves demanded a 100 per cent payment up front and cancelled their trips unilaterally.

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