Q&ABilly Hogan interview: 'We're really excited to be back in the US'

Arne Slot's Reds arrived in Pittsburgh on Tuesday to begin their Stateside preparations for the 2024-25 campaign as they meet Real Betis at Acrisure Stadium on Friday (kick-off 7.30pm EST).

Clashes against Arsenal in Philadelphia and Manchester United in Columbia, South Carolina then follow, along with a vast amount of community and supporter events taking place throughout the trip.

Read Liverpoolfc.com's chat with Hogan as he looked forward to another memorable stay in America…

• Get tickets for Liverpool's pre-season games in the USA here

Billy, we've arrived in the USA – how much are you looking forward to this?

Yeah, it's great to be here. We've obviously just landed and arrived at the hotel. Excited to be back in the US, we were last here in 2019 and had a phenomenal reception everywhere we went. We're obviously looking forward to the same here in 2024. A couple of summers without pre-season tours [in 2020 and 2021] and then we were in Asia for the last two. So it felt like the right time to come back to North America.

We're here in Pittsburgh for the first match on Friday, then we go to Philadelphia for the match on Wednesday and then to Columbia, South Carolina to wrap it up next Saturday. So, really looking forward to it. A tremendous amount of work goes into bringing the team out to our supporters who are outside of the UK and outside Europe, so I just want to take a second to say thanks to everybody internally who works so hard on these events. It's people across the entire club that are working on it. Really looking forward to being here – it's going to be a lot of work and a lot of fun.

How important is this period in preparation for a new Premier League season?

This is called pre-season for a reason, it is about getting the team in shape and as Arne said, it's really about building upon the fitness levels. Obviously due to the fact there has been a number of tournaments this summer, we have players who are coming back at various times and that's a challenge, getting everybody up to a fitness level. But this is incredibly important from our standpoint, it's something that goes into a lot of the thinking around the facilities that we go to.

The three venues we're playing in – Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and South Carolina – are phenomenal venues. But the training venues themselves are really top-class. Most importantly, the groundsmen have given it their seal of approval. We're really excited about the training facilities. This is about getting the team in shape; so it's important to bring them out to our supporters around the world but it's also to make sure they have time to build upon their fitness.

These supporters are largely getting up in the middle of the night to watch Liverpool. To see them in the flesh here will be seismic to so many people?

Yeah, it's a part of being one of the biggest clubs in the world, is you've got supporters who are all over the world; many of whom will never have the chance to come to Anfield and never get the chance to see Liverpool play a match live in the UK or Europe. It's our opportunity, and we feel like it's our responsibility, to take the club out and to be able to engage with supporters more directly. It's important for us to do that wherever we are in the world, that's something we really look forward to when we come out to these communities, doing events in the communities and really engaging with our supporters here on the ground.

There are a number of supporters clubs here as well. There will be a lot of engagement with them and a big party going on no doubt...

We're blessed to have a number of Official Liverpool Supporters Clubs here in the States – actually 57 in the US across 35 different states. A tremendous following. I think it speaks to the popularity of the team, it speaks to the popularity of the Premier League – in fact, our match against Arsenal last season [had] over two million followers and it's actually a US audience record with NBC, our broadcast partner here in the US. It's an incredibly important market for the team itself. Over half of our commercial partners are actually headquartered in the US now – Nike, Expedia, Google, UPS. And it's our largest international market from a merchandising and a retail standpoint. So, lots of different reasons to come back and, of course, it's always about engaging with our supporters when we're here on the ground.

It's not just that the team are here to train. They're going to be out there meeting people in the community, spreading the word of Liverpool...

Absolutely. That's something that we take very seriously. It's not just come into a match and head out again. It's something that we feel it's important – that we're engaging in the community. And in particular, our LFC Foundation coaches will be out working with a number of different groups here in each community – Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and South Carolina. We've got the opportunity to work with a number of different programmes on the ground and actually with the LeBron James Foundation events later in the week.

The first team will be engaging with our supporters as well, working with the Make A Wish Foundation in each of the cities to engage with the supporters. It's something we feel really strongly about. And then obviously there's a bunch of fan events going on – our very own Jamie Webster will be playing – so fans have a lot of special events in store. [I'm] looking forward to what's going to be a really fun tour.

And just finally where football is concerned, a new manager, of course, preparing for that new season and great opposition to come up against…

It's going to be a very competitive three matches: obviously Real Betis here in Pittsburgh and then Arsenal in Philadelphia, Manchester United in South Carolina. We've got some history with Real Betis as well but we're playing two foes we know well in Arsenal and Manchester United. But I think it's important for all four teams in this case as we all get ready and ramp up for the season [and] to have some competitive matches to play. All three of them are going to be terrific.

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