Premier League soccer is coming to Annapolis.
English sides Crystal Palace and Wolverhampton Wanderers (commonly known as Wolves) will play at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium on July 31 at 8 p.m. The game is part of The Stateside Cup, a three-game showcase of English teams in the U.S.
Tickets will be available for the teams’ supporter groups beginning Friday and to the general public on Monday at 10 a.m. They can be purchased at StatesideCup.com and start at $35.
Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, home of Midshipmen football, is one of three Maryland venues that will host international soccer this summer.
The U.S. Men’s National Team will face Colombia in a friendly at Commanders Field, home of Washington’s NFL team, in Landover on June 8, and Argentina and Guatemala will play there on June 14. M&T Bank Stadium will then host A.C. Milan and Real Madrid on Aug. 6.
A few players — A.C. Milan’s Christian Pulisic and Yunus Musah and Crystal Palace’s Chris Richards — could play in both the USMNT match as well as with their club this summer in Maryland.
The Premier League season is currently wrapping up (Crystal Palace and Wolves play this Saturday) and the 2024-25 regular season will begin again in August, a few weeks after the Annapolis game. As part of the Stateside Cup hosted by Maryland-based Elite Promotions Group, Crystal Palace, Wolves, and a third Premier League team, West Ham United, will each play two matches in the U.S. The other two matches will be in Jacksonville and Tampa, Florida, on July 27 and Aug. 3.
Maryland hosted Premier League teams last year when Landover held two games, and in 2022, when Arsenal beat Everton in front of an announced crowd of 39,245 at M&T Bank Stadium.
When that game was planned, soccer fans in Baltimore had hoped that the city would host men’s World Cup matches in 2026. However, Charm City was not selected as one of the 16 sites. Baltimore might still be involved in the event, though; for example, one or more teams could practice and stay in Baltimore.
The Maryland Stadium Authority is currently studying two Baltimore city-owned sites — Carroll Park and Swann Park — for a potential soccer stadium that could hold between 7,500 and 10,000 spectators and host a minor league club that feeds to MLS side D.C. United. The study, which will cost the club and government leaders $450,000, will take about a year to complete. The analysis does not indicate that the city will necessarily add a stadium, just that a report will be available for club and government authorities to evaluate.
Navy-Marine Corps Stadium, which can hold 34,000 spectators, previously hosted major soccer competition in 1984 when six Olympic matches — including two featuring eventual gold medalist France — were played in Annapolis. The venue began hosting the Annapolis Blues, a semi-professional team competing in the National Premier Soccer League, last year.
The Blues, which set a league single-game attendance record of 8,368 fans last season, are seeking to set another record with 10,000 spectators at their home opener this season on June 1.
Planning special matches like this is “largely dependent on the availability of venues and the availability of teams,” Mike Libber, president of Elite Promotions, said in a statement. Annapolis was chosen as a location, he said, because of the Blues’ recent success, the strong youth soccer community and because it could draw interest from Baltimore, Washington and the Eastern Shore.
