Swans confirm pre-season tour in Dallas

11th May

Swansea City will prepare for the new Barclays Premier League season in America by competing in an international tournament in Dallas, Texas, from July 11-19.
Garry Monk's squad will fly to America for a week's intense training before going on to compete in the six-team tournament that includes Chivas Guadalajara (Mexico), Olympique Lyonnais (France), Raja Casablanca (Morocco), Pachuca (Mexico) and Malaga (Spain).
Hosted in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex, the tournament is expected to draw a sizeable crowd of football enthusiasts and fans of participating clubs from the locality, including the tens of thousands of kids playing soccer in the area.
The tournament, which groups the Swans with Pachuca and Malaga, will be played at the Cotton Bowl Stadium in Dallas and Toyota Stadium in Frisco. Fixtures and venue draws are to be confirmed.
The Cotton Bowl Stadium was originally known as Fair Park Stadium and has a capacity of 92,100.
One of the venues of the 1994 FIFA World Cup, it has been home to a number of teams over the years, including the Dallas Cowboys (1960-1971) from the NFL and FC Dallas of the MLS.
It has also hosted many football friendlies, including Real Madrid v AS Roma last year.
The Toyota Stadium is an $80m football-specific stadium with a 20,500-seat capacity. Its primary tenant is MLS team FC Dallas who relocated from the Cotton Bowl Stadium in August 2005.
The stadium complex also has an additional 17 regulation size stadium-quality pitches (both grass and artificial) outside the main stadium.
It is the third time the Swans have prepared for pre-season in America having travelled to the Colorado and California areas under former boss Michael Laudrup in 2012 and Chicago, Milwaukee and Minnesota last season under Monk. 

Fixture dates, venues and ticket details will be announced shortly.
Group A
Chivas Guadalajara (Mexico)
Olympique Lyonnais (France)
Raja Casablanca (Morocco)

Group B
Pachuca (Mexico)
Malaga (Spain)
Swansea City (Wales)

•    The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX Metropolitan area encompasses 13 counties within the state of Texas. It is divided into two distinct metropolitan divisions: Dallas-Plano-Irving and Fort Worth-Arlington-Grapevine.
•    Residents of the area informally refer to it as the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex as DFW or The Metroplex.
•    The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington MSA is the largest populated metropolitan area in Texas, the largest in the South, the fourth-largest in the USA and the tenth-largest in the Americas.
•    It is the economic and cultural hub of the region commonly called North Texas or North Central Texas and is the largest land-locked metropolitan area in the USA.
•    The Metroplex has one of the highest concentrations of corporate headquarters in the country and hence a major business hub that is home to 25 billionaires.
•    The DFW airport is the third busiest airport in the world in terms of aircraft movements.
•    Multiple dining, shopping, entertainment, and tourist attractions are standout features in the 70-plus principal cities within the Metroplex. More than 15 of those cities feature a population of 100,000 or more.

The international teams
Olympique Lyonnais (France)
Olympique Lyonnais is a top French club based in Lyon and the former club of Swans striker Bafetimbi Gomis.
A 12-time participant in the UEFA Champions League, they are the current leaders of the French Ligue 1 and competing with Paris Saint Germain for the title.
Notable players include French internationals Alexandre Lacazette, Clement Grenier, Nabil Fekir, Yoann Gourcuff, Maxime Gonalons, Portuguese goalkeeper Anthony Lopes and Algerian Rachid Ghezzal.

Malaga CF (Spain)
Malaga CF is a top Spanish La Liga club that qualified for the 2012-13 UEFA Champions League where they were quarter-finalists. The more prominent signings of that season were the Dutchman Ruud van Nistelrooy and the most expensive signing in the club's history, Santi Cazorla, who arrived from Villarreal in a €21 million deal.
Current notable players include Mexico's national goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa, Brazilian Wellington, Spain's Ignacio Camacho and Juanmi, plus Portuguese midfielder Duda. 

Raja Casablanca (Morocco)
Raja Casablanca is a sports club with sections in many different disciplines in Casablanca, Morocco.
Founded in 1949 as part of the political struggle against French rule by nationalists who aimed to create a focus for working-class young Moroccans, the club is most well known outside Morocco for its football team.
Crowned domestic champions on 11 occasions, they were the only Moroccan club and the first African and Arabic team to participate in the FIFA Club World Cup.
Notable players include Abdelkader El Ouadi, Ivorian Moussa Bakayoko, Nigeria's Ighodaro Osaguona, Mohammed Oulhaj and Abdelila Hafidi.
 
Pachuca CF (Mexico)
Club de Fútbol Pachuca is based in Pachuca, Hidalgo, and competes in the Mexican Premier League.
Founded by British miners in 1901, it is one of the oldest still existing football clubs in the Americas.
Since 1998 the club has been one of the most successful clubs in Mexico, winning five national championships, four CONCACAF Champions' Cups, the 2007 SuperLiga, one Copa Sudamericana and became the first CONCACAF team to win a CONMEBOL tournament.
Pachuca is also the only team in the world to have won a club competition in a Confederation outside of its own.
Notable players include Mexicans Jorge Hernandez, Guillermo Martinez, Oscar Perez and Ecuadorian Walter Ayovi.

Chivas Guadalajara (Mexico)
Chivas is a Mexican professional soccer club based in Guadalajara, Jalisco, in Mexico. The club is one of the ten founding members of the Mexican First Division and, along with longstanding rivals Club America, they have never been relegated to the second tier of Mexican soccer.
Chivas has a chequered history and enjoys a large following in Mexico as one of the country's most successful and popular teams.
The Swans played Chivas last year during their pre-season tour of America, drawing 1-1 in the first football game to be staged at Miller Park - home of the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team. The game was watched by around 34,000.
Notable players include Mexican internationals Carlos Salcido, Omar Bravo, Erick Torres Padilla, Patricio Araujo and Aldo de Nigris Garjado.