FIFA Clubs World Cup quarter -finalists will be Brazil’s Fluminense and Palmeiras team and Saudi Arabia’s Al Hilal team will be among the teams that appear.
Two different comments about this success story come to the fore. In an article in the Austria’s Krone newspaper, Fifa Global Football Development Director Wenger and Brazil’s legendary player Gilberto Silva’s views “in a non -surprising way, the European Clubs Clubs Clubs Cups are dominant. Two Brazil team and the surprise team from Saudi Arabia. After the stage, FIFA Technical Working Group (TSG) stressed the learning effect of encountering the best clubs in Europe, “it was.
“A blessing for Brazil”
Gilberto Silva, who spoke to the newspaper Krone, said, “Gilberto Silva, a member of TSG, who won the 2002 World Cup with Brazil, was very pleased with the performances of his citizens.” Now we can see that these clubs play at a very high level. Of course, there is still a lot to develop, but we evaluate every opportunity to make our game best best and to be as globally competitive as we are here. “
“Maybe the reason is that they gain self -confidence”
Arsene Wengeri, one of the legendary coach, said, “Maybe the reason for this is to gain self -confidence.” He determined the biggest difference in front of the castle, where the stars of European teams showed the classes. “In the last third, European clubs are more clinical,” he said and referred to better finishing activities.
EL ECONOMISTE EVALUATED AS A ‘SURPRISE’
The Argentine El Economista newspaper believes that this event is a surprise. The newspaper, “2025 Clubs World Cup in the last stage of the great surprise Saudi Arabia and Brazil, while the last eight candidates are three teams. These countries have reached the quarter finals of the leagues surprised everyone.
“They don’t look like an easy opponent”
“There are two leagues (Saudi Arabia and Brazil), who are below the top five leagues in the world, but have arguments that they are superior to Portugal and the Netherlands,” he said.
Guillermo Navarro García also speaking to the newspaper, “Saudi Arabia and Brazil has a completely different history in both leagues and national teams in football. Asian countries, famous foreign players and coaches are characterized by depositing a large amount of money, South American countries produced them on their own. They do not look like an easy opponent in the stage, “he said.
It was the unexpected Al Hilal’s do
The continuation of the article in the newspaper is as follows:
Perhaps the most unexpected one was Al Hilal, who eliminated 4-3 eliminates in the last 16 rounds of Pep Guardiola’s powerful Manchester City. Since they were the Saudi Arabian team, they did not have much focus of attention, but their cadres cannot be considered inexperienced. El Hilal, Saudi Arabia Premier League (SPL) in recent years by making the same moves, Europe has not yet reached the age of retirement transferred to many players and many teams strengthened.
To see this strategy, just look at the 35 most expensive transfer in SPL history: all of them after the summer of 2023. Brazilian Neymar, despite the time in disability rather than being active was the highest salary player with 90 million euros.
According to Transfermarkt, Al Hilal is on four of the 10 most expensive transfers in SPL history: Neymar is leading, then Malcom (Brazil) with 60 million euros, Rúben Neves (Portugal) with 55 million euros and Aleksandar Mitrovic (Serbia) with 52.6 million euros. They all came in the summer of 2023 and except ‘Ney’, the rest of the clubs continue to stay in the World Cup team.
Saudi Arabia came up with Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema, Sadio Mané, N’golo Kante, Riyadh Mahrez and many other important transfers. For example, the former Barcelona player Joao Cancecelo, former Napoli player Kalidou Koulibaly and former Sevilla player Yassine Bounou were the former Barcelona player Joao Cancelo, who defeated Manchester City and had previously had a 1-1 draw with Real Madrid in the group stage. “You can’t represent a whole league with a team’s achievements. However, this model makes the clubs more competitive,” Navarro García emphasizes. “This is due to the fact that players from Europe are not as experienced as players in MLS (the United States League). There are many beautiful years waiting for them,” Garcia said.
The two examples confirming this are the Colombian striker Jhon Durán, who was transferred to El Nassr at the age of 21, and Moussa Diaby, a 25 -year -old French wing player who transferred to El Committee.
On the other hand, although most of Al Hilal’s key players are foreigners, these Arab players do not mean that the door is closed. Clubs played in four matches in the World Cup, played in 10 Saudi, and the most striking one is Captain Salem Al-Dawsari, who was captain for his team in the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Amazon Efficiency
On the other side, Brazil, a power center in world football for decades. Unlike those in Saudi Arabia, the teams in the league are very famous because they are places where capabilities such as Pelé (Santos), Zico (Flamengo), Ronaldinho (Gremio) and Romario (Vasco da Gama) are raised.
In addition, Brazil has a wide dominance in the international team competitions, and Copa Libertadores is the second largest country in the number of championships in the number of championships by winning Copa Libertadores 24 times (second after Argentina’s 25) and the Clubs World Cup four times (Spain is ahead of eight championships).
“There is high performance in Brazil, raid at the continental level. Having good coaches for the growth of a country’s football is vital, and there are some of them in Brazil, Analyst emphasizes the Analyst.
However, the new breakthrough of the Brazilian league in recent years was to bring European players to the team that added experience and skill to local capabilities, even though they did not reach the highest level.
As an example of this strategy, Martin Braithwaite’s Gremio from Denmark; Memphis Depay from the Netherlands to Corinthians; Dimitri Payet’s Vasco Da Gama from France; Jamal Lewis from Northern Ireland to Sao Paulo can be shown.
“The Brazilian league is strengthened and can attract the stars and good coaches. So there are some stars dominating Copa Libertadores, but there are also other players who are in the second level of European football and rise to the next level.”
The situation of the Brazilian teams is striking because they contrast with their national teams. While Brazil struggles in the South American qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup, only seven of the 16 possible wins and hired the first foreign coach (Carlo Ancelotti, an Italian) in its history, but represents 25 %of the first eight in the Clubs World Cup.
However, it doesn’t matter to Guillermo Navarro: “I can’t see a connection with what’s going on in the national team.
Like Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, it is accepted as an exporting country, not importing. However, an interesting fact is that the four most expensive transfers in the history of Brasileira were realized in 2024, but none of them exceeded 30 million euros.
2025 Clubs World Cup in the quarter -finals Palmeiras, two of these transfers made: Vitor Roque (25.5 million euros) and Paulinho (18).
Palmeiras will face Chelsea in the quarter -finals, and Fluminense will face Al Hilal. From this quartet, a finalist will be selected against the other team and the match will be 100 %Europe: Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund and PSG with Bayern Munich.
Odatv.com
