After a brief stay in Hong Kong, Chelsea are off to Indonesia, where we’ll be playing a friendly against AC Milan in Jakarta on Saturday. And then, immediately after, we’re back to mainland Asia, with a game in Malaysia not 24 hours later! Certainly a whirlwind end to this two-week tour of Australia and Southeast Asia!
With so much travel to deal with, not to mention all the various commitments to fan-engagement and the like, it’s a miracle we can do any actual training. We certainly some of that unfortunately, with less than impressive performances in the last two friendlies against Spurs and Juventus. While preseason results don’t matter, the way we play does. And so far, we’ve lacked the cutting edge.
That said, Xabi Alonso is starting to see a team come together as a group, which should provide the necessary foundation for any substantive improvement in the future. Building the collective is certainly one of the primary goals of preseason, so it’s nice to see us making progress in that regard.
“We want to have a great team spirit and that is built on a daily basis with a great culture in the building. That helps in the moment you have to compete. You feel better having that togetherness, trust, and the bonds between the players are so important to ultimately building a winning mentality – and a team that can compete anywhere. So the football side is so important, but the mental side is as important. And the strength of the team is the most important.”
-Xabi Alonso; source: Chelsea FC
“We want to have a great team spirit and that is built on a daily basis with a great culture in the building. That helps in the moment you have to compete. You feel better having that togetherness, trust, and the bonds between the players are so important to ultimately building a winning mentality – and a team that can compete anywhere. So the football side is so important, but the mental side is as important. And the strength of the team is the most important.”
Then again, nothing builds great team spirit better than playing well and winning.
Date / Time: Saturday, August 8, 2026, 7pm local; 13.00 BST; 8am EDT
Venue: Gelora Bung Karno Main Stadium, Jakarta, Indonesia
Forecast: Hot hot hot, though a bit more bearable once the Sun goes down
On TV: CBS Sports Network; FOX Deportes (USA); elsewhere
Streaming: Paramount+, Fox One (USA), FanCode (India); StarTimes (NGA); CFC+ (UK/int’l) — CFC+ is Chelsea’s new-ish premium(?) streaming service so if your region does not have a rights-holder, you can watch there for £9.99 (or buy all six preseason games for just a little more at £14.99; or subscribe for the whole year for a little bit more at £19.99)
Chelsea team news: Cole Palmer and Levi Colwill sat out Wednesday’s friendly with minor knocks, which hopefully will prove minor indeed — just like it was the case with Robert Sánchez, who was back in action after his precautionary absence the match prior. Wednesday’s defeat also saw the return of Mykhailo Mudryk after a 20-month absence from football, which was nice to see, at least on a human level.
With Chelsea playing twice in the span of about 24 hours this weekend, we will presumably see a split squad between this game and the game on Sunday against Malaysian champions Johor Darul Ta’zim.
AC Milan team news: Milan have a new head coach in Ruben Amorim and a new main man up front after spending a club-record €74m on PSG and Portugal striker Gonçalo Ramos. Another €30m was dropped on defender Mario Gila, once of Real Madrid‘s youth teams as the Rossoneri attempt to return to the top of the pile in Serie A after finishing outside the top-four the last two seasons.
As has been the case for a few years now, their squad contains a lot of familiar faces and multiple former Chelsea players, including Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Fikayo Tomori, Christopher Nkunku, and Christian Pulisic — though Pulisic will miss out due to the injury he picked up at the World Cup as his horrendous 2026 calendar year rolls on. Nkunku also struggled last season (the whole season) and there have been plenty of rumors that he might be moving on already. He’s not gone anywhere just yet however and scored the late equalizer in their previous friendly, a 1-1 draw against bitter rivals, and defending Serie A champions Inter Milan.
Previously: We last played Milan in the group stages of the 2022-23 Champions League, winning both home and away. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang scored in both games, fully accounting for two-thirds of his total goals in his Chelsea career. (Auba’s still playing, mind you, and still scoring in double-digits wherever he goes. His Chelsea season was the only one since 2011 where he failed to reach that mark.) We also have some prior history in this very stadium, beating a local all-star selection, 8-1, back in 2013.
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