Friday, June 13

Sports Mole previews Sunday's Club World Cup clash between Paris Saint-Germain and Atletico Madrid, including predictions, team news and possible lineups.

Paris Saint-Germain and Atletico Madrid will meet in the Club World Cup’s first all-European meeting at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on Sunday.

Kicking off at 12pm local time, fans in France and Spain will be settling down at 9pm to watch this one, as Group B’s two clear favourites go head-to-head in their group opener.

---

Match preview

Being drawn alongside Botafogo and Seattle Sounders, PSG and Atletico are resounding favourites to advance from this group, but one or both of them will drop points to begin with.

This is both club’s debut at the Club World Cup, but PSG would have been taking part in its old format later this year regardless, after their Champions League triumph at the end of May.

Instead, Luis Enrique’s men will take part in the renamed Intercontinental Cup in December, which takes on the same format as the previous edition of the Cup World Cup, a competition the manager won back in 2015.

The competition this summer is more of a mammoth task to win, with seven matches to navigate to take glory, as opposed to one, but no club will come into it with more confidence than PSG.

Enrique’s men enjoyed the perfect season, winning Ligue 1 by 19 points, collecting another Coupe de France with consummate ease, before making light work of Inter Milan in the Champions League final, setting a record-high scoreline by thrashing the Nerazzurri 5-0.

Those five goals added to a season-long tally of 152 scored by PSG, who were a joy to watch, especially for the neutral, as they have also only kept three clean sheets in their last 12 games.

They were unable to keep Atletico at bay when they met during the league phase of the Champions League either, where Diego Simeone’s men completed a customary smash-and-grab win over the Parisians at the Parc des Princes, during a difficult spell in the early stages of the competition for the French side.

Angel Correa scored a 93rd-minute winner for Atletico, despite Los Colchoneros being outshot 22-to-4 and having less than 30% possession on the night.

Both sides went in opposite directions soon after, as Atletico’s season fizzled out, finishing a distant third, and failing to make much of a mark in either the Champions League or the Copa del Rey.

Simeone did oversee six wins in their final nine games, scoring 19 goals in their last five victories, but there was little on the line for the Madrid club after losing in the Copa semi-final at the start of April.

While this will be their Cup World Cup debut, Atletico have experience in a similar sort of environment, as they played in the 1974 Intercontinental Cup as European Cup runners-up, when Bayern Munich declined to participate, and they beat Independiente 2-1 on aggregate to take home the trophy

Paris Saint-Germain form (all competitions):

L W W W W W

Atletico Madrid form (all competitions):

W D W L W W

---

Team News

There are no surprises on either side, with both managers selecting strong squads for this competition, and there are few injury concerns for the two to worry about.

Ousmane Dembele withdrew from the France squad after the UEFA Nations League semi-final defeat last week and is the only serious doubt for PSG, with Bradley Barcola expected to be fine after sustaining a knock in the same squad.

Barcola and Goncalo Ramos will hope to take Dembele’s place in the side, with Desire Doue now a certain starter after his Champions League final heroics, where he became the first player ever to contribute to three goals in the fixture.

Atletico Madrid are set to be at full strength, because despite missing the last game of the season, goalkeeper Jan Oblak featured for Slovenia in their win over Bosnia-Herzegovina last week, and has since met up with the squad.

Simeone had numerous players on international duty last week, including five with Argentina, as Nahuel Molina, Rodrigo De Paul and Julian Alvarez all started both games for the Albiceleste.

Alexander Sorloth has a little further to travel, after a great week with Norway, scoring at home to Italy before helping his nation to a narrow win in Estonia, and he scored a hat trick off the bench in the final La Liga game of the season, but he is expected to begin as a substitute once more

Paris Saint-Germain possible starting lineup:

Donnarumma; Hakimi, Marquinhos, Pacho, Nuno Mendes; Joao Neves, Vitinha, Fabian Ruiz; Doue, Goncalo Ramos, Kvaratskhelia

Atletico Madrid possible starting lineup:

Oblak; Molina, Le Normand, Gimenez, Javi Galan; Simeone, De Paul, Koke, Gallagher; Griezmann, Alvarez

---

We say: Paris Saint-Germain 2-1 Atletico Madrid

 

PSG can do no wrong in 2025, and they are unsurprisingly among the heavy favourites to win this competition, after collecting four trophies in 2024-25.

This will be a stern test to begin with though, and will tell us where the Parisians are at mentally and physically after a phenomenal campaign, with Atletico looking to beat them for the second time in nine months, but it is hard to look past the French side, given their recent form

For data analysis of the most likely results, scorelines and more for this match please click here.

---

---

 

ID:575470:1false2false3false: from db desktop :LenBod:collect8077:

Previews by email

---

Collect / Create New Data