It’s an exceedingly busy end to Chelsea’a two-week preseason tour, with the Blues taking on Malaysian champions Johor Darul Ta’zim barely 24 hours after our friendly against AC Milan. It may be a relatively short journey across the Java Sea, from Jakarta, Indonesia to Iskandar Puteri in Malaysia, which is right at the southern tip of the country, next to Singapore, but it’s still a relatively rare occurrence that we’d have two games, friendly or otherwise, in such quick succession. Thankfully, our preseason squad
is over 30 strong at this point still, so there should be plenty of fresh legs for this one.
Date / Time: Sunday, August 9, 2026, 8pm (local), 13.00 BST; 8am EDT
Venue: Sultan Ibrahim Stadium, Iskandar Puteri, Malaysia — a fairly new stadium that opened only about six years ago
Forecast: Hot, chance of thunderstorms
On TV: none (UK/USA); elsewhere
Streaming: Paramount+ (USA), FanCode (India); StarTimes (NGA); CFC+ (UK/int’l) — CFC+ is Chelsea’s new-ish streaming service; you can watch there for £9.99 (or subscribe for the whole year for £19.99)
Johor Darul Ta’zim team news: JDT are the back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-…-to-back defending champions of the Malaysia Super League, having won the last twelve seasons in a row, and counting. The last four years they’ve done so alongside a domestic treble, even. They’ve performed a bit less spectacularly in continental competition, but they did make it to the quarterfinals of the AFC Champions League last season as well.
They are currently managed Xisco Muñoz, who led Watford to Premier League promotion in 2021, but struggled at subsequent appointments, including a 12-game winless stint in charge of Sheffield Wednesday, and a disappointing year in charge of my hometown team in Slovakia before taking the JDT job in 2025. He’s only lost 6 of his 56 games managed since.
The team is a mix of local talent and quite a few imports from the Spanish lower leagues, including new signing Juan Diego Molina Martínez, who goes by the nickname/mononym, Stoichkov, after the legendary Bulgaria and Barcelona striker. It’s probably fair to say that he’s nowhere near as good.
Chelsea team news: Xabi Alonso treated the Milan friendly more or less like a competitive game, making only a couple changes at the hour-mark before introducing a few more players for the final few minutes. So presumably all those who played 90 minutes (including Roméo Lavia!) or anything close to that (including all the big stars), will be getting the day off in this one.
Promisingly, it wasn’t just Alonso who treated the Milan friendly like a proper match, and we got the best performance of the preseason from the players as well. The manager was pleased enough with what he saw, knowing that we’re only still just getting started.
“I think that we will get better and by the start of the Premier League season we will be ready. But even that will be another starting point in the evolution of the team. So it will be a process that takes months and in every game.”
-Xabi Alonso; source: Chelsea FC
Previously: This will be our fifth game of the preseason, with one more to come, next weekend at home against Real Sociedad. The squad will start to take its final shape by then.
