Say what you like about the Club World Cup. Say it’s a glorified pre-season tournament. Say it features poor quality teams and is missing big guns like Barcelona and Liverpool. But there’s no doubt teams are taking it seriously.
With a potential £100million jackpot at stake for the winner, clubs are going for glory knowing the prize fund would hand them a huge transfer bonus going into the new season. We saw Bayern Munich demolish Auckland City 10-0 with a full strength side. Harry Kane, Kingsley Coman, Michael Olise and Thomas Muller all took part and they didn’t hold back one bit. After the game Olise was asked if he felt bad for the New Zealand minnows. “Nope,” he said.
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Reigning European champions Paris Saint-Germain then thumped Atletico Madrid with a resounding 4-0 win. There was only one change from their 5-0 Champions League final romp over Inter Milan.
As for Chelsea, coach Enzo Maresca put out a starting XI you’d expect to see in a Premier League game in their 2-0 win over LAFC, with Cole Palmer, Moises Caicedo and Nicolas Jackson all playing. Manchester City also won 2-0 against Wydad, starting some of their new big signings along with the likes of Phil Foden, Jeremy Doku and Omar Marmoush.
While the competition is still in the early stages, we’re starting to see who the heavyweights are and who are the teams just here for the ride.
Beginning with the favourites, PSG, it’s clear that Luis Enrique’s men are going to take some stopping. The Parisiens started strongly with a big win against the toughest team in their group in Atletico. Their next games against Botafogo and Seattle Sounders should be even more comfortable and they’re in a good position to breeze through to the knockout stages.
PSG are backed to win the competition at 3/1 by Betfair, which comes as no surprise given their status as champions of Europe. They’re also rated at 17/10 to reach the final in New York on July 13.
The second favourites behind PSG are Real Madrid. The Spanish giants have won the Champions League 15 times and won the previous iteration of this competition five times, so you can bet they’ll be eager to stamp their mark on the new version by winning it at the first time of asking. Betfair have given them 9/2 odds of doing exactly that.
Madrid have a talented new manager on board in Xabi Alonso, while they’ve added to a glittering squad that already features superstars like Jude Bellingham, Vinicius Jr and Kylian Mbappe, who was just hospitalised with acute gastroenteritis and missed Wednesday’s 1-1 draw with Al Hilal. Liverpool defender Trent Alexander-Arnold and Bournemouth’s Dean Huijsen have both arrived and the La Liga team should have plenty of strength in depth to outlast many of their rivals in the United States this summer.
Rounding off the top five, we have two English teams in Manchester City and Chelsea — backed as third and fifth favourites respectively, either side of Bayern Munich.
City are rated at 5/1 to win the Club World Cup. The 2023 treble winners boast the likes of Erling Haaland and have been boosted by a raft of new signings, including Lyon playmaker Rayan Cherki, midfielder Tijjani Reijnders from AC Milan, defender Rayan Ait-Nouri from Wolves and Chelsea goalkeeper Marcus Bettinelli.
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Pep Guardiola’s men are well accustomed to playing in competitions like this and battling on multiple fronts, so they should have no issue attempting to go all the way in America while also planning for the new Premier League season.
2025 Club World Cup winner odds
As for Chelsea, Betfair has given them odds of 9/1 to win the cup, just behind Bayern Munich at 13/2. The Blues have qualified for the Champions League this season and this competition will be a great warm up for them to test themselves against quality opposition. That will likely come later in the tournament as they’ve been given a forgiving group of LAFC, Flamengo and ES Tunis. They’re backed with new signing Liam Delap and will be desperate to land that £100m to enable them to further bolster their squad with signings.
The next round of games should give us a better idea of which underdog teams could actually pose a significant challenge in this tournament, with Chelsea coming up against Brazilian side Flamengo, while Man City face Al-Ain and PSG play Botafogo. If you were feeling brave and wanted to back some of those underdogs, Al-Ain are rated as 300/1 outsiders to triumph this summer, while part-timers Auckland face nearly impossible odds of 500/1 to pull off a fairytale win.
Betting/odds links in this article are provided by partners of The Athletic. Restrictions may apply. All odds quoted are accurate at the time of publishing and may not match your local provider.
The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.
(Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)
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