It turns out the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup group stage was less a formality (mea culpa) and more a war of attrition.

The Brazilian teams have shined bright; Real Madrid dropped points to Al-Hilal; Boca Juniors somehow drew both mighty Benfica and semi-pro Auckland City, and are now watching the rest of the tournament from home. And Inter Miami – sixth-place in the Eastern Conference! – rebounded from a disappointing opener against Al Ahly with historic results against FC Porto and Palmeiras, punching their ticket to the knockout rounds. They’re one of two Concacaf sides to have done so (CF Monterrey of LIGA MX are the other), and the only one of three MLS entrants to do the job.

Now comes the reward. Or the punishment, depending on your perspective.

Lionel Messi and company will take the field against Paris Saint-Germain in the Round of 16 on Sunday (12 pm ET | DAZN.com). They’re facing the reigning UEFA Champions League winners, Ligue 1 champions for what feels like the 20th straight year, and a team with a very real claim to the title of Best Club Side in the World™.

They are terrifying. Ask the other Inter side in the knockout stage about them.

But much of the pre-match narrative will be less about PSG’s terrifyingness and more about Messi’s PSG past. This is a reunion loaded with subtext: an icon facing his former club on what FIFA hopes will become the biggest stage the sport has to offer outside of the actual World Cup (funny how that worked out). Millions will be watching.

They’ve come this far. They’ll need a mini-miracle to go further. They have Messi.

Winner gets Flamengo (Brazil) or Bayern Munich (Germany) in the quarterfinals on July 5.

Paris Saint-Germain

Vitinha is, to me, the second-best all-around central midfielder in the world, behind only Pedri (who he outplayed head-to-head in the Nations League final, it should be said). Just brilliant in every single way, but if there’s one thing you want to focus on, it’s how quickly he finds space and how decisively he turns that space into advantage.

Left winger Khvicha Kvaratskhelia is a 1v1 dynamo who’s refined his game over the past two years – during which time he moved from Napoli to PSG for a reported $80 million – to become more consistently productive. Related: He’s got a goal and two assists in this tournament.

The best right back in the world is Achraf Hakimi, who’s an A+ distributor, an A+ ball progressor, and an A+ final-third attacking threat on either the overlap or the underlap. He is extremely clever with his movement when PSG are on the front foot.

Inter Miami CF

I don’t need to explain to you why Messi is the GOAT. He is arguably still the best player in the world right now as well, and a time-capsule performance here would be yet another feather in a cap full of them.

Luis Suárez spent the two months leading up to this tournament looking fully cooked. But he’s found his second wind and was dominant against Palmeiras – including maybe the tournament’s best individual goal.

I’m gonna go sicko mode here and list center back Maxi Falcón as the third player to watch. For Miami to be as good as they need to be, he must be mistake-free both with and without the ball for the full 90 (or 120) minutes.
Can Inter Miami pull off the upset against Paris Saint-Germain?

What’s at stake for Paris Saint-Germain?

PSG got that Champions League monkey off their backs, finally joining the club whose door they’d been trying to batter down for a dozen years.

Now they need to start collecting more big, international trophies to confirm their spot in perpetuity. Winning the inaugural, expanded edition of the Club World Cup seems like a great way to do that.

Losing to an MLS team? Even one led by Messi? You can imagine what the critics would do with that.

What’s at stake for Inter Miami CF?

Expectations entering the 2025 season were high. But after a promising start, the Herons have fallen somewhat short, with a prolonged slump that saw them drop from the top of the Supporters’ Shield standings and get trounced in the Concacaf Champions Cup by Vancouver. There probably won’t be a defense of last year’s Shield; there definitely won’t be a continental title.

And yet they have probably exceeded expectations here in just getting out of their Club World Cup group. A win? It feels almost impossible to imagine.

A one-sided loss? The bad vibes of April and May might come rushing back.

Luis Enrique’s men won that Champions League trophy by, unsurprisingly, playing a front-foot 4-3-3 heavy on possession and absolutely fanatical about pressing (both regular and counter-pressing).

The key was Ousmane Dembélé, who went from an injury-prone, disappointing winger with Barcelona to the best pressing No. 9 in the world in Paris. Enrique called him the MVP of the win over Inter Milan for his work against the ball, which the Italians could not handle:

Without Dembélé in this tournament – he might be back by the quarterfinals, as per reports – and with some of the games played in weather hotter than the surface of the sun, the pressing has been ratcheted down a few notches. Instead, we’ve seen PSG rely more on orchestration from Vitinha and Spanish midfield maestro Fabián Ruiz, with playmaking and goal danger coming from the wingers.

They look like what you’d expect the best team in the world to look like: fast, precise, creative and ruthless. But they’re not invincible, as Botafogo showed in a shocking 1-0 win in which PSG couldn’t quite break down the Brazilian bunker.

I do not, however, think that’s replicable with Miami’s backline composition. Botafogo won the Copa Libertadores because of their defense; Miami won last year’s Supporters’ Shield in spite of theirs.

So anyway, I’d expect PSG to try to carry as much possession as possible and count on wearing Miami out with superior talent and firepower, just as they did against a game and well-drilled, but ultimately overmatched Seattle Sounders FC side during a 2-0 win in the final group stage game.

Inter Miami CF

Miami have mostly played out of what I’ll call a 4-4-1-1 this season. What I mean by that is Messi’s nominally a forward – they’ll usually defend with a front two and banks of four behind him, so it kind of looks like a 4-4-2 – but he’s totally free to drop in and become a playmaker, or flare wide to become a winger, or even, yes, do forward things like running off of Suárez’s movement and hold-up play.

It’s a completely free role. The game is oriented around Messi because he makes goals happen when you orient things around him:

The midfield balance has changed in this tournament, though, and I think it’s been more of a 4-2-3-1 with Messi coming deeper more often to provide some pitch control for the Herons. You could see it clearly on Telasco Segovia’s goal vs. Porto:

Messi playing deeper in possession like that means four things:

Miami have kept the numbers battle in central midfield even since that nearly disastrous first half vs. Al Ahly.
They are turning the ball over less often in dangerous spots.
Sergio Busquets can play a little less expansively and more as an orchestrator, while his partner in the double pivot can be more of a hunter.

Those wide overloads are happening more often and creating more danger.

Of course, it’s PSG. So Miami probably won’t have the ball all that much, no matter where Messi sets up shop and how they array their double pivot. And those wide overloads? With the winger corps PSG have… whew. I’m not saying Miami should sit and absorb all game – that’s asking for trouble – but the fullbacks will have to be very smart about picking their moments, the center backs will have to be mistake-free, and goalkeeper Óscar Ustari will have to conjure up one more blinder.

Projected lineups
25-Lineups-PSG-CWC

Enrique has rotated pretty liberally throughout the group stage, but since it’s one-and-done territory, I expect to see the first-choice XI from the whistle. Here’s my guess at what that looks like without Dembélé (though I am in no way certain Gonçalo Ramos, who has struggled, will get the nod up top).

25-Lineups-MIA-CWC-Rof16

It’ll be the 4-2-3-1. I don’t expect any changes from their 2-2 draw vs. Palmeiras, given how well they played for the first 75 minutes of that one.

Mlssoccer.com