Manchester City are taking the Club World Cup seriously and they can make some serious money as they look to go all the way
Manchester City were ruthless against Juventus
Some wins are more important than others and some defeats are more costly. Manchester City beating Juventus could yet go down as one of City’s biggest of the 2025/26 season.
Of course there is some debate over whether this is the new campaign or still the old one, proving a nightmare for statisticians. It doesn’t really feel right to talk about Erling Haaland’s 33rd goal of the campaign, especially when he has four new signings alongside him.
City are treating it as a fresh start but largely because they want to get away from their 2024/25 (relative) misery as fast as they can, but if they had more to shout about from the season it might be different. Nevertheless, the Club World Cup is a significant opportunity for them to tell the football universe that they are back
In their best-case scenario, the Blues look back in 12 months about how everything came together on the pitch in Orlando on Thursday to give them the belief back that they are good enough to win multiple trophies again. Even looking much more to the short-term though, the Juventus win already looks bigger than many.
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For a start, City get £1.5m for winning it as they did all the group matches. As the only team to achieve that, CEO Ferran Soriano is already welcoming more money into the bank than any of the other 31 clubs.
Factor in the fact that it gave City an easier draw for the last-16 - they now play Al Hilal rather than Real Madrid - and a quarter-final will earn them an extra £5m. Go all the way and it’s an extra £20m.
In a world where transfers are instantly scrutinised, City’s £275m spend in the calendar year would have a whopping chunk taken out of it if they can earn more than a third of it back in a few weeks. No wonder City have taken the tournament seriously, and no wonder they took the Juventus game so seriously.
“Today was more or less a final, we talked about that,” Guardiola said afterwards. “It doesn’t matter what happened, the first target was to qualify, but we never know if it’s better to finish first or second.
"It’s how we play every game, friendly and official game, to win it. Today we did it, that’s what I’m pleased about. The players know it was the first time in a long time that we performed the way we performed."
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