Chelsea came into the Club World Cup with most bookmakers ranking them as around 5th favourites to win the trophy, behind the dominant forces of Man City, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and PSG, but ahead of the rest of the pack.
But a convincing and damaging 3-1 loss to Flamengo on Friday night has changed things drastically. The Blues have plunged to 25/1 to win the whole thing,
Still, with the Blues’ odds having tumbled so dramatically, maybe this is the moment to have a look at the best betting welcome bonuses in Kenya and take Enzo Maresca’s team at the longest possible odds.
Surely the Blues will beat ES Tunis on Tuesday night, qualifying them for the next round? That’s where things get tricky, of course, with Bayern and Benfica also playing on Tuesday, and the winner (likely Bayern) facing us in the next round.
But still, we’ve seen strange results already in the heat, and there’s no telling what could happen as the tournament progresses. The best possible outcome for Chelsea of course is that Benfica somehow pull off a result against Vincent Kompany’s menacing looking Bavarian outfit, but we can’t expect that.
We have to think we’ll be facing Bayern, and work out how to beat them.
How to best bestial Bayern in big second round clash
Perhaps it’s too positive to look at this way, but Chelsea should be well set up to beat Bayern compared to most sides. Enzo Maresca’s group’s struggles have been against smaller teams they need to break down. Against a team who will push forward and control the game there will be a lot of pace to unleash on the counter.
Nicolas Jackson and Liam Delap are both physical strikers who can cause a lot of damage on the break, and we’ve seen twice in this tournament how dangerous Pedro Neto can be bursting into space.
Maresca just has to play his cards very carefully here – we need to get past Tunis while using as few first team players as possible, and then go back to full power to take on Bayern.
It’s an interesting preview of the Champions League this season, where we will finally face a lot of fixtures like this one. It’s time to test ourselves against the best, and from what we’ve seen in the USA so far, Bayern are very much up there, even if they are shaded by PSG and Man City as favourites.
UPDATE: We’re playing Benfica! That’s superb news.
