Group H at the 2025 Club World Cup begins on Wednesday. We look ahead to the action with our Real Madrid vs Al-Hilal prediction and preview.
Real Madrid vs Al-Hilal Stats: The Key Insights
Real Madrid are heavy favourites to start their Club World Cup campaign with a win, as the Opta supercomputer sees them beat Al-Hilal in 68.9% of pre-match simulations.
The game will be Xabi Alonso’s first as Madrid manager, while Trent Alexander-Arnold and Dean Huijsen could also make their debuts.
Simone Inzaghi also takes charge of Al-Hilal for the first time after joining from Inter.
Real Madrid begin their FIFA Club World Cup campaign on Wednesday when they face Al-Hilal at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami.
Los Blancos qualified for the competition as the winners of the 2021-22 and 2023-24 UEFA
Champions League, while Al-Hilal are involved courtesy of winning the 2021 AFC Champions League.
The La Liga giants will be led for the first time by new head coach Xabi Alonso, who arrived from Bayer Leverkusen to replace the outgoing Carlo Ancelotti.
The game could also see some debuting players, with Trent Alexander-Arnold and Dean Huijsen coming in from Liverpool and Bournemouth, respectively. Madrid paid the Premier League champions a reported €10 million for Alexander-Arnold to get him a month early so he could be involved in the group stage, so it would be surprising not to see him thrown in straight away.
Many eyes will be on the England international, but other stars that fans in Miami will be eager to see will be Vinícius Júnior and Kylian Mbappé. Vinícius is one of four players across Europe’s big-five leagues to both score 20+ goals (21) and register 15+ assists (15) across all competitions in the 2024-25 season. It is the third time he has achieved that feat in a single campaign, also doing so in 2021-22 (22 goals, 16 assists) and 2022-23 (23 goals, 19 assists).
Mbappé has scored more goals in all competitions this season than any other player
from the top five European leagues, having found the net 43 times in 56 matches.
Kylian Mbappe xG all comps 2024-25
Like Madrid, who finished second to Barcelona in La Liga, Al-Hilal were left frustrated in their league campaign, with Al-Ittihad beating them to the Saudi Pro League title.
They were also beaten in the semi-finals of the Asian Champions League by fellow Saudi side Al-Ahli, which led to the sacking of manager Jorge Jesus. He has been replaced by Simone Inzaghi, who joins from UEFA Champions League runners-up Inter.
The Italian will have plenty of talent to work with. Two of the three players to create the most chances in open play in the 2024-25 Saudi Pro League were duo Malcom (75) and Salem Al Dawsari (64), with the latter having both the most overall assists (15) and most assists in open play (11) in the competition.
The two teams have met before in the previous format of the Club World Cup in
February 2023. Real Madrid beat Al-Hilal 5-3 in the final, which was the joint-highest scoring match under the old format of the competition, as well as the highest scoring final.
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Real Madrid vs Al-Hilal Prediction
Real Madrid v Al-Hilal Opta prediction
The Opta supercomputer makes Real Madrid heavy favourites for this one, with the La Liga side winning 68.9% of its 10,000 simulations.
Al-Hilal caused an upset in 13.5% of sims by beating Madrid, while they secured a respectable draw in the remaining 17.6%.
Real Madrid vs Al-Hilal Squads
Real Madrid
Thibaut Courtois, Andriy Lunin, Fran González, Sergio Mestre, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Dani Carvajal, Éder Militão, David Alaba, Lucas Vázquez, Fran García, Antonio Rüdiger, Ferland Mendy, Dean Huijsen, Youssef Enríquez, Jacobo Ramón, Diego Aguado, Raúl Asencio, Jesús Fortea, Jude Bellingham, Aurélien Tchouaméni, Eduardo Camavinga, Federico Valverde, Luka Modric, Arda Güler, Dani Ceballos, Chema Andres, Víctor Muñoz, Mario Martin, Vinícius Júnior, Kylian Mbappé, Rodrygo, Endrick, Gonzalo García, Brahim Díaz
Head Coach: Xabi Alonso
Al-Hilal
Yassine Bounou, Mohammed Al Yami, Abdulelah Al Ghamdi, Ahmad Aburasyin, Kalidou Koulibaly, Ali Al Bulayhi, Renan Lodi, João Cancelo, Khalifah Al Dawsari, Yasser Al Shahrani, Moteb Al Harbi, Rayan Al Ghamdi, Saleh Barnawi, Saud Haroun, Saad Al Muthary, Ali Lajami, Hassan Al Tambakti, Hamad Al Yami, Mohammed Al Qahtani, Sergej Milinkovic-Savic, Rúben Neves, Musab Al Juwayr, Salem Al Dawsari, Nasser Al Dawsari, Mohamed Kanno, Malcom, Abdulellah Al-Malki, Abdulaziz Hadhood, Mohammed Abdullah Muhaysh, Kaio César, Khalid Al-Ghannam, Marcos Leonardo, Aleksandar Mitrovic, Abdullah Al Hamddan, Turki Al Ghumayl
Head Coach: Simone Inzaghi
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system. They assign an ability score to over 13,000 domestic men’s football teams. This score is on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off, here are the Opta Power Rankings for both sides.
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