The Sounders now know who and when they’re playing in next summer’s massive tournament.
It’s taken a bit longer than any of us expected, but the Club World Cup is finally coming into something like focus. While there are still some blurry edges – we don’t know how much money is on the line or how much tickets will cost – we do know just about everything else.
Here’s what what you’ll need to know to get all caught up:
Paris St.-Germain, Atletico Madrid and Botafogo. There are a lot of people calling it the tournament’s “Group of Death,” which is mostly about the teams the Sounders are playing. PSG have won France’s Ligue 1 in 10 of the past 12 seasons and are currently leading the league this year. They routinely make deep runs in Champions League and have the eighth-most-valuable roster in the world, according to Transfermarkt. Atletico is generally considered the third-best team in Spain, having finished no worse than third in each of the past 12 years and are the only team outside of Barcelona and Real Madrid to win La Liga in the last 20 years. Botafogo doesn’t quite have the history of those teams, but they are arguably the best team in South America right now, having just won Copa Libertadores and likely claiming Brazil’s Serie A today.
There were two main camps going into the draw. One group wanted the Sounders to attract the biggest opponents possible to ramp up the attention. The other camp was hoping for a more manageable group that might give the Sounders a puncher’s chance to advance.
My initial reaction was that the Sounders didn’t really get either. While PSG and Atletico are very good teams, they don’t quite have the star power or the fanbase of Europe’s biggest. Similarly, Botafogo are extremely good but don’t have much of an international following. Realistically, the Sounders will have to play far beyond their talent level to get out of this group and, frankly, that is maybe optimistic.
But the more I thought about it, this draw may be just fine. Sure, there’s a decent chance the Sounders get trounced, but those are the risks in playing this kind of tournament and at least these are opponents that soccer fans will appreciate. As cool as it would have been to have Real Madrid or Chelsea, those teams were going to draw tourists. I’m not sure how likely those fans are to be converted into Sounders fans.
The fans who come out to see these games will be here primarily because they love the sport – if not necessarily these teams – and are probably a bit more likely to stick around. Heck, a lot of them are probably Sounders fans already. The marketing pitch is straightforward: “Come watch the Sounders play three of the best teams in the world in matches that matter.”
Soccer is a low-scoring sport and the Sounders are going to be playing at home, so it would be silly to say the Sounders have “no” chance to get out of the group. But the deck is definitely stacked against them. I’m not sure there’s anything they can do to dramatically change that calculus, but they can at least make some effort.
The biggest mistake the Sounders can make is to spend the next six months promoting this and then do nothing to significantly improve the roster. In fact, the best way to sell tickets is to actually be proactive about improving the roster and show fans that even though they’re facing some of the world’s top teams, they aren’t going to sit idly by and just accept their fate. This is the Sounders’ best chance to reach the tens of thousands of soccer fans in the region who don’t regularly attend games and convince those fans to give them a chance. This is an entirely different value calculation than the next summer’s Men’s World Cup, which will be mostly people who will never think about attending a Sounders game. They can’t afford to blow this opportunity.
There will be six total games in Seattle. That will include all three of the Sounders’ group stage games and three additional games involving teams from Group E. We’ll get to see River Plate-Urawa Red Diamonds (June 17 at noon), Inter Milan-Urawa (June 21 at noon) and Inter-River (June 25 at 6 PM). River Plate are one of the two historic giants from Argentina; Red Diamonds are a three-time Asian Champions League winner and one of the most popular teams in Japan; and Inter Milan is a 20-time winner of Italy’s Serie A and a three-time UEFA Champions League winner.
Let’s remember, this is an international tournament. Most of the kickoff times are scheduled at a time that allows the visiting team’s home fans to watch at a reasonably convenient time on TV. While it seems at least a little counter-intuitive for a game to kick off at mid-day during the week, I don’t think it’s really that big of an issue. I assure you, it will be the same thing when the Men’s World Cup comes here in 2026, too. Plus, the games are six months off. If local fans want to go, they have plenty of time to adjust their schedules accordingly. For visiting fans, I doubt they care.
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