Bitter Premier League rivals Manchester United and Leeds United are to play a pre-season friendly at Croke Park this August.
The match will take place on Wednesday, 12 August – three days after the All-Ireland Camogie finals bring down the curtain on the 2026 inter-county Gaelic games season.
The 2026 World Cup in North America has seen the kick-off of the Premier League season pushed back, opening a window for the Jones’s Road ground to host a game of this nature.
GAA headquarters regularly stages concerts in August, while the first ever NFL regular season game to be held in Ireland was hosted in Croke Park between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Minnesota Vikings in September last year.
It will be the first soccer match in the stadium since Ireland’s 1-0 defeat to France in a World Cup play-off back in 2009, towards the end of a period when the national rugby and soccer teams used Croke Park while Lansdowne Road was being redeveloped.
With both Premier League clubs very well supported in Ireland, organisers will be hoping for a big attendance.
Leeds United played a pre-season friendly against AC Milan at Aviva Stadium last summer, which saw a large contingent of supporters travelling from Yorkshire.
The rivalry between the two Uniteds is likely to again see large numbers of fans travelling from the UK.