Atletico Madrid are set to travel around the world for their upcoming preseason ties, with a gruelling travel schedule involved too.
Los Colchoneros finished up their final training session in Madrid on Monday lunchtime, ahead of an evening flight to Seoul, South Korea, which will take 12 hours and 20 minutes, a total of 10,010km.
❗️| Atletico Madrid will travel to Seoul, South Korea, at 20:00 today. It will be a 14-hour journey. 🇰🇷
[@marca]
— Atletico Universe (@atletiuniverse) July 24, 2023
There they will play a K-League XI on the 27th of July, and Manchester City on the 30th. Following that, Los Colchoneros will fly to Monterrey, Mexico, to take on Real Sociedad on the 31st of July, which will take 14 hours and 11,450km.
The match itself takes place on the 3rd of August, after which they fly three hours north to San Francisco, 2,475km, in order to take on Sevilla on the 6th of August. That is before finally jumping on a flight back to Madrid, an 11-and-a-half hour journey, counting 9,350km.
In total, Atletico will go 33,285km on plane, and total over 40 hours on a plane – approaching two days of complete travel. They are not far off travelling 40,075km as per Diario AS, the entire circumference of the earth.
The Atletico board will no doubt point to the necessity to earn money through matches and promote their brand around the world, but the costs are high too. Such long travel times mean that Los Rojiblancos will arrive back in Madrid exhausted less than a week ahead of their first La Liga game. Equally, it makes something of mockery of Atletico claims that they are building infrastructure around the Civitas Metropolitano in a green fashion, if they are to jet off and pollute across the globe.
