by The short-lived Club World Cup will soon be consigned to history but Pep Guardiola wanted to emphasize the triumph of victory when Manchester City face Fluminense in Friday’s final. Their run to the business end of Jeddah was only an easy victory over Urawa Reds and back in the UK, more than 3,000 miles away, any author is dumbfounded. It was an unusual experience but, for their manager, that is all the more reason to treat a match with the South American champions as an opportunity that will never come up again.
“It’s so difficult to come here, to win the Copa Libertadores, to win the Champions League,” he said. “We have to give everything we have; it is something that stays forever. I don’t know if we will come back to play in the Club World Cup final.”
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City know they will have a shot at the 32-team jamboree scheduled for the summer of 2025 but Guardiola is clearly keen to live in the moment and let his romantic side run free as they filter out the merits of their opponents. It was clear that this was the final he wanted: it is difficult to challenge the supremacy of European club football but, once again, competition against the Brazilian giants would take on shades of glamour, mystique and real danger.
Maybe that will backfire at King Abdullah Sports City. “They play a typical Brazilian style from the 70s, 80s, early 90s,” Guardiola enthused with attack-minded Fluminense, who entertained greatly in beating Al-Ahly 2-0 on Monday but looked as porous as it was they fluent. “They play with the ball, a lot of short passes, the combinations are really good. We will have to be aware of how far we run behind the ball and accept that we play a team that plays in a way that we have never faced.
“I love how [Brazilian teams] associate with each other and respect a lot of time with the ball. I have a huge respect for the essence of Brazil: slow and fast, how they handle both rhythms. I saw him for many years.”
The challenge may be exotic, therefore attractive given the homogeneity of the dogs of so much of modern football, but there will still be notes of information. 35-year-old Marcelo, a four-time winner of this competition with Real Madrid and arguably among the best of all defenders, brings class and comfort from the highest level. Former Internazionale, Juventus and Fiorentina goalkeeper Felipe Melo is likely to start strongly at 40. Fluminense goalkeeper Fábio is 43 and joined Vasco da Gama shortly after they beat Manchester United in the 2000 edition of this event.
In total, nine of this season’s squad are aged 33 or over and it is tempting to assume that there will be a few seasonal legs due to City’s tendency to let their opponents chase them. After all, this is the 73rd game of their campaign. Praise, however, did not go down well and Fluminense were singled out by a British newspaper article that compared their team to a set of Soccer Aid veterans. “These things are done to get the attention of the audience and to get a reaction on social media,” Melo said. “But I don’t think it was a very smart idea. There are … players who can play after a certain age and still play better than other players. I still play because I love the game, because I am disciplined and because I work hard. Other people can say stupid things.”
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His manager, Fernando Diniz, who is Brazil’s interim head coach, claimed that such statements would add more fire to Fluminense’s belly. “It would be great if we won, but what we will show is that we are not a Soccer Aid team,” he said. “We have to be respected.”
On Wednesday night City fraternized with a beloved veteran of their own. Riyad Mahrez, who joined local club Al-Ahli in pre-season after five years at the Etihad, was dining with his former team-mates and it was a joy to see each other again. Guardiola probably didn’t mind having Mahrez available to him because Kevin De Bruyne, Erling Haaland and Jérémy Doku are not ready to return; However, a team without a striker reminiscent of the days before Haaland floated, managed to drag Urawa’s rotating forwards around quite effectively and should have provided space from Fluminense.
This is the fourth Club World Cup final between the enemies of these two superpowers: in the two most recent superpowers, in 2019 and 2021, Liverpool and Chelsea narrowly prevailed against Flamengo and Palmeiras. Both games went to extra time and were edge-of-the-seat contests; Guardiola raised the stakes again in an attempt to ensure that City would have the upper hand in their own. “There are emotions, it’s how you handle it,” he said. “We’re a day away from playing in a tournament, a final, to be here once in a lifetime.”
