Italian and Spanish soccer giants Juventus and Atletico Madrid will not play a friendly in Israel’s second-largest city Tel Aviv on Sunday night and have cited security concerns as the reason for the cancellation Match.
Fighting between Palestinian militants and the Israeli army escalated on Saturday after an Israeli airstrike killed a Palestinian commander.
Taysir al-Jabari was a senior commander of the al-Quds Brigades, which is a military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, and was killed alongside a number of his fellow militants in strikes on a building in high rise in northern Gaza.
The two European clubs therefore gave up playing their friendly match in Tel Aviv, and published a joint press release to announce that the match at Bloomfield Stadium had been canceled.
“Due to the current security situation, Comtec Group (the match promoter), Juventus and Atlético de Madrid announce that the friendly match between the two teams which was to take place in Israel this Sunday August 7 at the Bloomfield stadium in Tel -Aviv, has been cancelled,” it read.
The teams’ friendly was going to be their last in pre-season before their 2022/2023 Italian Serie A and Spanish La Liga campaigns kick off next weekend.
As Atleti visit Getafe on August 15, Juventus secure their bid to snatch the Scudetto from bitter rivals Inter Milan in progress the same day when they host Sassuolo in Turin.
Later on Saturday night, however, Juve announced that the game would go ahead at their Continassa training center after all.
Juve-Atletico to play tomorrow at the JTC.
— JuventusFC (@juventusfcen) August 6, 2022
Last weekend, the Bloomfield stadium hosted Paris Saint Germain as they beat Nantes 4-0 in the Trophée des Champions.
Scoring his side’s first game, Lionel Messi then went viral after the rout for stopping a young boy being manhandled by security looking for a selfie with the seven-time Ballon d’Or winner.
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