There was a fantastic surprise for a number of our Supporters Club members yesterday, when Ashley Cole joined in at the ‘Tokyo Cup’ close to the team hotel base in Saitama.
The Tokyo Cup is a football competition ran and organised by the Chelsea Foundation and is the first of its kind on a pre-season tour.
Eight teams entered the competition, including our Japanese and Tokyo Supporters Clubs, while there were also representatives from our partners Yokohama, Nike and MSC Cruises involved.
The eight sides were split into two groups of four, with the two top teams progressing through to the ‘Champions League’ knockout phase and the remaining sides competing for the Europa League prize.
Ashley Cole joined in with the fun, with our former left-back joining us on the pre-season tour to Japan to take part in a number of commercial activities. It’s fair to say he’s still as competitive as ever and his performance certainly showed that!
Unfortunately, there wasn’t a Chelsea name on either of the trophies this time, with Yokohama lifting the Champions League and Nike winning the Europa League.
Cole was on hand to present the trophies to the winning sides and then pose for plenty of photographs.
Watch Chelsea take on Barcelona in our final pre-season game in Japan on Tuesday, 23 July via a live stream on either this website or our mobile app. Click here for details.