FIFA Club World Cup Preview: Group H

Real Madrid begin a new era under one of their former players Xabi Alonso after finishing the 2024/25 season with only the UEFA Super Cup trophy. He’ll have his work cut out for him trying mold Real Madrid into his effective style of play at Leverkusen, so the Club World Cup will be a good test for Los Blancos.

They will be joined by Saudi outfit Al Hilal that just made Simon Inzaghi the highest paid coach in world football at $26 million a year.

Salzburg out of Austria will also be in the group along with Mexican side Pachuca.

This seems pretty straightforward for Real Madrid, but with a change in manager and system could cause some chaos.

Real Madrid

Based on my simulations:

Knockout Stage: 93.23%

Quarterfinals: 65.05%

Semifinals: 49.70%

Finals: 28.40%

Champions: 15.72%

Real Madrid is going to have undergo a big transformation to get to how Xabi Alonso played at Leverkusen. It starts out of possession because Real Madrid was a bad pressing team under Carlo Ancelotti. In the Champions League they would sit back in a 4-4-2 mid to low block and even in La Liga their pressing numbers were very average.

image via the analyst

The biggest problem is their front two in the 4-4-2 are passengers out of possession. Kylian Mbappe and Vinicius Jr. do very little to zero defensive work and for a press to be successful everyone has to be committed.

Even when Real Madrid are playing a low block they are often defending with eight outfield players. Here’s an example from one of their El Clasico’s with Barcelona.

I could go into more and more detail, but Tifo did an excellent video breaking down all of the challenges Alonso faces.

Of course he does have the most talent team in world football and they did go through a very bad injury crisis across their backline this year.

What I think you are most likely going to see is not an immediate change tactically to Real Madrid. Under Ancelotti, they didn’t really have a definable tactical plan, he was more adapting to the situations they were in.