Start a trip to Asia! Liverpool CEO: We like Hong Kong, China, and will commemorate Jota during the game

Arrived in Hong Kong, China on Monday afternoon to prepare for the first match of the Asian tour. Slott's side will compete in two matches - against AC Milan in Hong Kong and against Yokohama Mariners in Japan, while several club legends, including Sir Daglish, have joined the expedition.

Billy, we just arrived in Hong Kong, China a few hours ago. After the death of the Jota brothers, these weeks have been extremely difficult for all the relevant personnel of the club.

This was a devastating blow to the club, especially for his wife and family. We are in Asia, but we will continue to stay in touch with them, discussing how we can remember them during this week’s competition and our plans to hold a longer, more permanent tribute for them.

The past few weeks have been very, very difficult. I want to thank everyone in the sports world, not just the football world, but the entire sports world, for your helping hand and support. As I said before, Diogo is an excellent football player and a very outstanding person, and we miss him deeply.

This will be a different tour, but it is undoubtedly a very important moment for the team to prepare for a new season?

Yes, obviously this will be a slightly different preseason, but this is a preseason after all, and we need to get the team into the form from a physical perspective so that they can start to accumulate some game time. We had a closed-door friendly match with Stoke City hours before takeoff, so continuing to fight for game time and getting better is obviously the most important reason we do so.

Football is the most important part of our work. This is an opportunity for us to understand new signings. We are very excited to play AC Milan at the Kaide Stadium, which will be the first European friendly match at the Kaide Stadium and the crowds are full, which will be great. After that, we will go to Yokohama and play against the Yokohama Mariners in front of more than 70,000 fans, and it is also full. Therefore, the next two games will be exciting, and the next week will be exciting.

This is our first return to Asia since 2023. Why is this region so important for the team to prepare for the new season?

As we said, the most important thing in preseason is to focus on football. But if we seek opportunities to combine all aspects of the club with football, this is a big reason why we come here to tour. Asia is a very important and large fan base for the club, so we are very excited to be here.

Hong Kong, China, is one of the Asian divisions of Standard Chartered Bank, and from the perspective of Standard Chartered Bank, this market is very important to them. You mentioned that we just landed and we were on Japan Airlines flights, so I want to thank them - it was a very comfortable way to travel, thank them so much, obviously their headquarters are in Japan. Kodansha is another partner of ours and its headquarters is also in Japan. We will carry out a large number of activities with partners including Carlsberg, AXA and others.

Therefore, we will do a lot of work in the market and look forward to the opportunity to bring the club closer to the fans. We have discussed this issue before, we have a lot of fans around the world, especially in Asia; our social media followers account for almost a quarter of our total number of fans, and more than 50 million fans are following the club on social media.

This is an opportunity to bring our fans closer to the club and witness the club's game firsthand. Many of them never have the chance to come to Anfield, so this is the chance we bring the club to them.

Many activities are planned here, including working with the Liverpool Football Club Foundation...

We want to make sure that when we participate in any tournament, it's not just for the game, we do much more than that. We mentioned some of the business activities we will do, but we especially want to make sure we can go deep into the community and do our local activities.

As you said, we invited coaches from the Liverpool Football Club Foundation – as I said, they are the hardest-working people on the tour. They are holding football training camps almost from morning to night, and I will also participate in an event at the Hong Kong Special Olympics in China tomorrow.

We are working with the "Wishing Foundation" in Japan, and some local children will have the opportunity to meet first-team players. So, yes, it’s very important that we participate in community activities. Some of our legendary stars are here too - Sir Daglish told me on the plane that this is his first time in Hong Kong, China. Ian Rush, Sammy Hypia, Lucas Reva, Niam Fahei, Dudek are here too - so we have a bunch of great legendary stars and former players who will be attending the foundation's training camps, as well as some business events, and first team players will also participate.

So, this is a great opportunity for us. Finally, it is also important that we will open the 20th independent retail store in Hong Kong, China. A few weeks ago, we just opened the 19th. This means that we have more independent retail stores than any sports club, which fully demonstrates the strength of our club.

The new players who joined this summer also have the opportunity to experience the size of the club shortly after signing...

Yes, I think new signings are always fun, especially if you can participate in the tour, whether you go to Asia or North America, you can immediately feel the size of the club. So, in two packed matches, a Standard Chartered Bank Cup in Hong Kong, China, again against AC Milan after more than 20 years of Miracle Istanbul, it will be a great night and moment.

Then go to Japan, which will be our first preseason game in Japan. I talked with Daglish and Rush about their trip to Japan for the InterContinental Cup in 1984, but the results were not very good! But we are looking forward to two great games and the great week or so we will be spending here, we just hope to have a great time on the tour and we hope everyone can really enjoy it. We love coming here.