Tottenham Hotspur will embark on a summer pre-season tour to Son Heung-min's homeland of South Korea this summer.
The pandemic put paid to global trips in the past two summers and Spurs had planned to head to South Korea in 2020 before the changing nature of the world ended those hopes.
Now they have announced that Antonio Conte and his squad will finally make the trip back over to Asia and visit Son's homeland in July.
The club announced: "We are delighted to announce that our Men’s first team will travel to South Korea for a pre-season tour this July in preparation for the 2022/23 season.
"As we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, we are excited to be able to engage with our overseas fans once again and head back out on an international tour for the first time since 2019.
"This will be our third visit to South Korea, having successfully competed in the Peace Cup in 2005 and taken part in a promotional trip in 2017.
"During our visit this summer, Antonio Conte’s team will play two exhibition matches in the Coupang Play Series, organised and promoted by Pitch International and Coupang – venues, dates, opposition and how fans can watch to be announced in due course."
Spurs chairman Daniel Levy said: “We are delighted to be heading back out on tour after what has been such a challenging time for us all. Being able to take our team overseas during pre-season is always a key part of the preparation for any forthcoming season – I speak on behalf of all players and staff in saying we have missed being able to do so in recent years.
“A trip to Korea, in particular, is long overdue – we are well aware of the incredible support we have there, with many fans travelling to London to watch our matches in recent years.”
Son added: “I am extremely excited to be returning home to South Korea this summer alongside my Spurs team-mates – for most of whom this will be their first visit. I can’t wait to see their reaction to the passionate Korean fans and the incredible atmosphere in what we are sure will be packed out stadiums for our matches.”
Tottenham's pre-season summer tours are often three-match affairs and having lost tour revenue from the previous two missed summers there is the expectation that the club could try to add a second leg to the 2022 edition.
Spurs' last pre-season tour was to Asia in 2019, with matches played in Singapore and Shanghai.
In 2018 the club travelled to the USA for three games in San Diego, Los Angeles and Minneapolis and the year before they took on three fixtures in Orlando, New York and Nashville.
In 2016, Spurs travelled to Australia for a couple of matches in Melbourne.
Despite the World Cup being in the winter, the summer break will be affected this year by the three Nations League matches to be played from June 2 until June 14 just after the Premier League season ends.
However, the next Premier League season begins on August 6, earlier than usual due to the gap required for the World Cup, so breaks for the players could be down to little more than the minimum three weeks required by FIFA.
