TA Club World Cup Group C Preview: Amateur teams bravely enter the United States, are Bayern ready to win the championship?

The new Club World Cup will kick off this Sunday, with 32 teams from six continents going to compete. To this end, TheAthletic analyzed the popularity and highlights of each group's qualifying. Author Jeff Rueter brings us an analysis of Group C.

The C Group C of this Club World Cup is full of highlights. Not only are there famous Bayern and Benfica in Europe, but also the iconic team of South American football, Boca Youth. The last team is the New Zealand team Auckland City, which won the third place in the 2014 Club World Cup and shocked the world. So, looking forward to the future of this group, is Bayern ready to win the New World Club Cup? Can Benfica achieve great results in America with Di Maria's last dance? Can Boca youth overcome the recent downturn and become the dark horse of the event? Auckland City, can they recreate their glory more than ten years ago and become disruptors?

Schedule at a glance

•June 16: Bayern Munich vs Auckland City (:00:00)

•June 17: Boca Youth vs Benfica (:06:00)

•June 21: Benfica vs Auckland City (:00:00)

•June 21: Bayern Munich vs Boca Youth (:09:00)

•June 25: Auckland City vs Boca Youth (:03:00)

•June 25: Benfica vs Bayern Munich (:03:00)

Quick Popularity: Bayern

As long as Bayern plays in the event, they can become popular teams for granted.

But then again, Bayern's life in the Bundesliga has not been easy recently. Their monopoly position in the Bundesliga for 11 consecutive seasons in the 23/24 season was ended by Leverkusen led by Alonso. Fortunately, Bayern, who learned from his mistakes, performed very proactively in the 24/25 season. Bayern under the new coach Kompani has a more proactive and entertaining game style. His unique calmness in Manchester City's career helped ease the tension in the high-pressure locker room.

As most of the veterans who started their ten-year dominance gradually faded out, Kompany relied heavily on a new generation of players. Musiara made a well-known leaps ahead of her injury at the end of the 24/25 season, while Yu Pamecano established himself as a reliable central defender. Oris performed well after joining from Crystal Palace, and Harry Kane was able to continue to contribute goals and assists after joining.

In 34 rounds of the Bundesliga and 14 Champions League games, Bayern's ability to control the game is unique among the top European teams.

A total of 26 teams from the Bundesliga, Premier League, La Liga and Serie A participated in the Champions League or the UEFA Cup, but none of them had an average possession rate higher than Bayern's 67.2%. At the same time, Bayern has 80 goals behind Barcelona with 82 goals, and its expected goal difference of 76.2 is far ahead of Barcelona, ​​which ranks second (+61.5). Among the sample teams, Bayern also has the highest frontcourt possession rate, reaching a suffocating 76.2%.

Under Kompany's rule, Bayern's secret to success is not only having and regaining more offensive touches than their opponents, but also committed to keeping the ball away from the opponent's team by accumulating touches in the third zone of the midfield.

In the Bundesliga and Champions League, nearly half of the ball possession time occurred in the third zone of the midfield (48.6%), while 31.1% of the touches occurred in Bayern's offensive zone three. This strategy leaves the defensive three relatively less intrusion (stayed far in the backfield) and provides plenty of time for a talented and balanced lineup to find ways to exploit opponents’ defensive weaknesses.

In the early stage of the Bundesliga finale last month, Bayern was aggressive and tried to lose suspense by scoring early goals. As shown in the picture above, when organizing the offense, Kompany's players boldly adopted a 2-4-4 formation, mainly keeping the midfielders in the central three zones and rib areas of the court, while the width is provided by two wingers close to the wing. This creates a variety of pass lines to deliver shells to Kane and others, while almost always a teammate is ready to respond at any time in case of losing the ball.

Focus showdown

Although Benfica and Bayern are both traditional giants with a long history in European football, their confrontation is extremely one-sided. Bayern has not lost in 11 matches with the Portuguese team and won eight games. From this perspective, perhaps the opening match between Benfica and Boca Youth can reveal more highlights.

Before Messi landed in the United States, the Argentine Football Association had already made targeted efforts to establish influence in the United States, opening its headquarters in Miami in 2023, and establishing a training center and a regional youth training academy. As one of Argentina's most prestigious teams, Boca Youth Team's participation in this Club World Cup should further promote this outreach effort - they will play the first two games of the group stage in the city of South Florida.

In the Champions League this season, Benfica played more directly than most teams and was happy to give possession to his opponent. They averaged 3.1 direct attacks per game, ranking seventh among the 36 first-stage participating teams, while their 41.1% front-court possession rate is 11th lowest. Despite this, Benfica can still average 14 shots per game, creating 2.2 "excellent" opportunities per game (11th place), and creating 21% (12th place).

This game mode helps to mask the anomaly of its decisive quality deficiency in the offensive third zone; for a club that regularly produces promising offensive stars and attracts some impressive players to join Lisbon, its 68.6% pass success rate of offensive third zone ranked 29th in only 36 participating teams, with poor performance.. The difference is that the 37-year-old Otamendi has proven that he can switch to that tougher character style; while Silva's current development stage, his defensive ability can be said to be a bit down from those eye-catching performances in 2023.

In the Champions League this season, Benfica successfully advanced to the league stage and passed the first round of play-offs, but was eliminated by Barcelona in the round of 16. In nine appearances, Silva won 61.3% of the aerial confrontation—slightly above the average of qualified centre-backs in the event (60.3%)—but its "real" tackle success rate was only 38.5%. Most of his time is not devoted to tackles and interceptions, but to compete for two penalty kicks and clearances.

For a player who is so proactive in possession, it would be shocking to see his defensive stats in the European game so dull. He has two years left on his contract and Hoyson has completed a transfer from Bournemouth to Real Madrid, with everyone's eyes set to focus on Silva to see how he handles another big event.

If Kane and Cavani can successfully limit him, it will undoubtedly greatly enhance his chances of joining a larger team.

Stories worth paying attention to

After winning the third place in the Club World Cup 11 years ago, many people want to know what kind of combat effectiveness Auckland City can show in this event.

Before the start of this Club World Cup, perhaps few teams will prepare to change their lineup like Auckland City. After qualifying in early December last year, it was reported that Auckland City hopes to temporarily loan players from its city rival Auckland FC. However, as of the time of writing, no loan players have joined.

Of course, no matter what the result is, this is a wise idea for Auckland City. After all, Auckland City is the only non-professional team in this Club World Cup. But the identity of non-professional teams does not hinder their previous identity as regulars at Club World Cup. Their record of 12 appearances in the Club World Cup is also the reward they deserve to win the Oceania Champions League 11 times in the past 14 years.

In any case, they may face severe challenges in the face of such a strong grouping.

Things you may not know...

If Benfica is enthusiastically sought after by American fans after setting foot on the land of America, please don't be surprised.

On February 28, 1904, 24 people gathered together to establish the Lisbon Sports Club, and four years later they acquired the Group Sport Benfica and followed the Benfica name. At that Creation Conference, these Creation Team bosses proposed some key team logo elements, which also accompanied the team for more than a century - they established red and white as the team's jersey color, and decided to adopt a Latin motto - "Epluribusunum" ("United to One").

It happened to be a coincidence in this Latin motto, which the United States used on its national emblem as early as 1782, and to this day it can still be seen on the presidential spokesperson, coins and the state flag of New York.

(Armour)

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