Intimate Rivals Heading to Club World Cup Semi-finals

Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund will face each other again this Saturday in New Jersey with a place in the semi-finals of the Club World Cup at stake. The global tournament once again pits two intimate rivals against each other, who have turned their encounters into a habit. The Champions League, which first brought them together in the semi-finals of the 1997-98 season, has defined the relationship between two entities that maintain a fluid dialogue in the offices but have left countless memorable chapters with the battles they have fought on the pitch.

The Champions League final held on June 1, 2024, in London marked the pinnacle of a long series of clashes that began with that dispute on April 1, 1998, at Santiago Bernabéu, where the south end goal collapsed, opening a tie that preluded the Whites' long-awaited Seventh victory a month later in Amsterdam. The most recent episode was the triumph achieved this season by Carlo Ancelotti's team over the side led by former Madrid player Nuri Sahin, thanks to a comeback orchestrated by Vinicius with a hat-trick in the second half.

Much has changed since that night at the end of last October for both the Spanish squad and the German block. Neither Carletto is on the Madrid bench nor Sahin on the Renanian team, both coaches consumed by results that did not meet their superiors' expectations. The Turk fell in January, with Dortmund struggling in the Bundesliga but still alive in a Champions League from which Barça eventually eliminated them in the quarter-finals, with former Croatian international and ex-Bayern Munich coach Niko Kovac at the helm. The Italian succumbed in May, when the end of a League in which Real Madrid could not retain the title won the previous season allowed the club chaired by Florentino Pérez to confirm a dismissal that had been expected since Arsenal knocked out the Whites also in the quarter-finals of the top continental competition.

Ancelotti's successor was Xabi Alonso, precisely the man who managed to end Bayern Munich's dominance in the Bundesliga in 2024, after futile attempts during the eleven years of the Bavarians' uninterrupted tyranny by a Dortmund that has not won in Germany since 2012. Since then, ten coaches have passed through the aurinegro bench. None have been able to reach the heights achieved by the man from Tolosa.

Now Xabi Alonso faces his first climb with Real Madrid, and to do so, he must conquer a new summit this Saturday by overcoming Dortmund in a match that finds Real Madrid in good spirits. The Whites have improved throughout the Club World Cup, which they opened with a dull draw against Al Hilal, but in which they are taking firm steps in implementing their new manager's ideas. The resounding victory against Salzburg at the end of the group stage, forged with the three-centre-back system that Xabi promoted at Leverkusen, continued with a solid victory over Juventus in the round of 16, a match that marked Mbappé's return to action while confirming Gonzalo's star.

With the Frenchman more seasoned, but still gaining rhythm and muscle tone after the gastroenteritis that sidelined him from the first phase, Xabi Alonso must choose between keeping the academy player in the starting lineup or giving all the responsibility back to Mbappé, who is just one goal away from matching his most prolific scoring season, the 44 he scored in his last season with PSG.

Serhou Guirassy has scored thirty-seven goals so far this season, having needed just one campaign to become Dortmund's offensive leader. An international at under-16, under-19, and under-20 levels with France, he eventually chose to represent Guinea, the land of his ancestors, at the senior level. The major clubs in his native country also failed to detect his talent in time, which is why he ended up moving to the Bundesliga, where in the last two seasons he has become one of the best strikers in the Old Continent.

He scored 44 goals in 58 matches with Stuttgart, where he arrived from Rennes, and in his first year in Dortmund, he has once again left a trail of goals, three of them in the current Club World Cup. His double in the round of 16 against Monterrey set up another meeting with a Real Madrid that has emerged unscathed from the last six encounters with Dortmund but still remembers that poker from Lewandowski that destroyed them over a decade ago.

Real Madrid: Courtois, Trent, Rüdiger, Tchouaméni, Huijsen, Fran García, Bellingham, Arda Güler, Valverde, Mbappé, and Vinicius.

Borussia Dortmund: Kobel, Ryerson, Bensebaini, Anton, Süle, Svensson, Gross, Sabitzer, Nmecha, Adeyemi, and Guirassy.

Referee: Ramon Abatti (Brazil).

Time: 22:00 h.

Stadium: MetLife Stadium (New Jersey).

TV: Telecinco / Dazn.