FIFA Club World Cup: Group A Preview

Group A is definitely one of the weaker groups and the conspiracy theorist in me says that was be design so Lionel Messi and Inter Miami had the easiest possible road to the knockout stage.

We have Al Ahly the champions of Egypt and consistently one of the best teams in Africa, Palmeiras from Brazil who has one of the most electric young talents in Estêvão, Porto who had a down season finishing third in the Portuguese Primiera Liga, and of course Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami.

Before we get started I thought I’d lay out how these previews are going to work. I will go into detail as much as a I can for each team and at the end I will lay the expected points and percentage of each team finishing in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in the group.

Inter Miami

Based on my simulations:

Knockout Stage: 27.60%

Quarterfinals: 3.66%

Semifinals: 0.65%

Finals: 0.08%

Champions: 0.01%

Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami are without a doubt one of the best offensive teams in MLS and if you were wondering if Messi still has it, yes he does:

Offensively there really aren’t any issues with Inter Miami at the moment. They have rebounded from their bad run of form that culminated with a 3-0 loss to Orlando City on May 18th. Over the course of their last matches against Philadelphia, Montreal, and Columbus they have scored 12 goals, as Javier Mascherano’s system is working, but only temporarily.

The thing is, Inter Miami has the highest non-penalty xG per shot, but it’s in large part because they don’t take a high number of shots compared to the top teams in MLS. Also, you can see below that they have the biggest xG overperformance in the league so far this season.

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He wants them to be a team that can press high and more importantly play a really high defensive line, but Inter Miami simply don’t have the players to cover that much ground and play that system.

In terms of pressing, they are middle of the road in terms of tackles won inside the opponents final third. They also are only ninth in drawing opponents offsides, which isn’t good when you are playing that high of a defensive line.

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That has led them to allowing 1.51 xG per 90 minutes, which is dreadful in a league like MLS with the talent that they have. Translating that to the Club World Cup against teams like Palmerias and Porto who have way more talent than anything Inter Miami sees in MLS is a recipe for disaster, which is why I think Messi is headed for an early exit in this tournament.

Porto

Based on my simulations:

Knockout Stage: 69.04%

Quarterfinals: 23.05%

Semifinals: 6.79%

Finals: 2.21%

Champions: 0.58%

It was a difficult season for Porto. They lost their longtime manager Sérgio Conceição to AC Milan in the middle of the season and never were in the title race with Sporting and Benfica.

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39 year old Martín Anselmi took over on January 27th and switched Porto to a 3-4-3 system as opposed to the 4-4-2 or 4-2-3-1 they had been playing for a long time. That switch definitely came with it’s growing pains because Porto were without a doubt a worse team over the second half of the season.

They did not play an overly difficult schedule under Anselmi after getting knocked out of the Europa League by Roma. They lost to Braga and got destroyed by Benfica 4-1, which raises some alarm bells that they are not near the level of the two elite teams in Portugal.

When you dive deep into the data, Anselmi’s switch in system has had a pretty severe effect on Porto moving them more towards an average side, rather than an elite on in Portugal:

Of course Porto did lose two key players in Nico Gonzalez to Manchester City and Galeno to Al Ahli for a combined 110 million euros in January. That definitely had an effect on them over the second half of the season, but it really shouldn’t have caused them completely drop off by almost a full goals per 90 minutes.