In December, Real Madrid won the inaugural Intercontinental Cup. The implications for Manchester City were indirect but it does mean that, on a technicality, they enter the Club World Cup as defending champions. An expanded competition can seem a new one: under the old format, the last final – officially, anyway, given Real’s win over Pachuca came in a rebranded competition – was City’s 4-0 walloping of Fluminense in Saudi Arabia.
It was City’s fifth trophy of 2023. It is not the only reason it feels like a different time. One of the goals came from Phil Foden, then on fire. Julian Alvarez bookended the scoring with a brace, but he now leads the line for Atletico Madrid. The silverware was lifted by Kyle Walker, but the captain isn’t even part of the squad City are taking to the United States after spending the second half of the season on loan at AC Milan. Jack Grealish, who started against Fluminense, didn’t make the plane this summer either.
Whatever the competition is called, there was the sense that, 18 months ago, City were entitled to call themselves the world’s best. Hindsight shows it was one of the last triumphs of a team; they won that season’s Premier League but even men as perceptive as Pep Guardiola and Txiki Begiristain failed to notice the evidence of decline until it was too late.
Now they have some of the trappings of the global elite. They arrive in the United States with a manager, in Guardiola, some would deem the greatest ever, the reigning Ballon d’Or winner, in Rodri, and a striker with 318 goals for club and country at the age of 24, in Erling Haaland.
But they look a long way from the world’s best now. They are also the team who finished third in the Premier League and lost the FA Cup final to Crystal Palace, who only came 22nd in the Champions League group stage and, for the first time since 2012-13, failed to reach its last 16. They have lost 16 of their last 43 games. It is Manchester City, but not as much of the world knew them.
So one scenario is that they travel several thousand miles to merely have the same problems on a different continent. Juventus, who beat them in the Champions League group, are their last opponents in the Club World Cup group. Real Madrid, who knocked them out of Europe, could do likewise in the global tournament; they represent a potential last-16 tie. History could repeat itself, this time in Florida.
This time, however, the cast list would at least be different. City are not alone in that. It is one of the curiosities of the Club World Cup: the side who qualified for it are very different to the one that will compete in it.
The group that Guardiola has taken across the Atlantic features neither Walker nor Grealish but does include eight players bought in 2025, four of them acquired in three days this week. Chair Khaldoon al-Mubarak admitted City were not “aggressive” enough in the transfer market last summer. That criticism could not be levelled at them this year. They have spent almost £300m in 2025; more, if add-ons are triggered. They have been particularly purposeful in June.
And so a first glimpse of Tijjani Reijnders, Rayan Cherki and Rayan Ait-Nouri – City will hope the new third-choice goalkeeper Marcus Bettinelli is only seen in the warm-up and on the bench – offers intrigue. Reijnders and Cherki, in particular, assume an importance in the shape of the new City, in the quest to forge a formidable new midfield.
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For different reasons, City approach the competition without both Kevin De Bruyne and Grealish, their greatest player gone permanently, their record buy exiled. January arrival Nico Gonzalez has had a stop-start City career but he was plunged into action in a side without Rodri. Now the scorer of the 2023 Champions League final winner could start for the first time since September. That combination of the new and the returning could mean Ilkay Gundogan, another of the talismanic figures of 2023, is rebranded as a reserve.
So this might be the start of Guardiola’s third City team. The first two attained greatness; the third will not get there yet but has to be more energetic than the ageing group who the Catalan felt lacked physicality.
There is a different team off the field, too. Guardiola has been flanked before by his proteges, in Mikel Arteta and Enzo Maresca, and a mentor, in Juanma Lillo, in the dugout. Now, in a distinct shift, he has Jurgen Klopp’s old sidekick: when Pep Lijnders took the RB Salzburg job last summer, he intended to be at the Club World Cup as a manager in his own right. But plans have changed, both his own and City’s, after chastening setbacks.
Lijnders has plenty of pedigree as a coach: he is a Club World Cup winner, too, from Liverpool’s 2019 triumph. Pep and Pep may be the odd couple but there is a new look to City. Even if they defend their title, it will be the start of a different era, not a continuation of the old.
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