We were guaranteed one Brazilian club in the Club World Cup quarterfinals, but a second seemed far from certain. That the second one ended up being Fluminense might be the biggest surprise of all.

Fluminense vs. Al-Hilal

Camping World Stadium, Orlando, Florida, July 4, 2025

Kickoff: 3:00PM EDT / 4:00 PM BRT / 7:00 PM GMT

Quick hits: Perhaps Fluminense’s win over Inter Milan wasn’t quite as big an upset as it initially felt like it should be. I stand by my general thoughts before the round of 16 that Flu aren’t nearly as good a team as Flamengo. But while Inter might have just reached the Champions League final, not only did they get blown out in that game, but they spent the Club World Cup dealing with an injury crisis so severe that they sent four players home after the group stage. Bayern Munich may have lost to Inter in the Champions League, but they’re generally healthier right now and are historically much more of a club that you’d expect to show up consistently for any given game.

Still, you can argue that Flu winning and Fla losing came down as much as anything to the marginal forces of chance smiling on the one team and not the other. It seems odd to say about a game in which all four of the goals scored against them could be traced back to very bad giveaways, but Flamengo played very well for the most part, out-shooting, out-possessing, and out-passing Bayern. Even those mistakes might not have mattered if Flamengo had had even a little bit more luck. Both of the corners that led up to Erick Pulgar’s early own goal should have been goal kicks for Fla; Harry Kane’s strike for the second goal took just the right deflection off Léo Ortiz to slip past the diving Agustín Rossi and in off the post. (Remind you of any goals the Seleção has conceded recently?) But when you make those sorts of mistakes, you open up the possibility for random bounces of the ball like that to go against you—to say nothing of the simple quality of execution of the third and particularly the fourth goal. Kane killed the game with the sort of precision, didn’t-even-look-up strike that no Brazilian forward has seemed capable of for at least fifteen years.

Still, the contrast with Fluminense is clear. They went ahead early through just the sort of random bounce that went against Flamengo, Jhon Arias’ cross deflecting high into the air and landing right in front of Germán Cano to nod between the legs of the indecisive Yann Sommer. Inter were generally awful, but even when they woke up with about half an hour to go, they found themselves lacking that last little bit of precision that had blessed Bayern. Stefan de Vrij missed an unbelievable sitter in the 69th minute, and in the last ten minutes Lautaro Martínez hit both post and goalkeeper, but not the little space between them that Kane found twice. Finally, Hércules pounced in stoppage time on Inter’s cheap giveaway to seal the deal. Again, execution is a huge part of the story—Flu simply did not make the mistakes that Fla did—but it still, to a great degree, came down simply to sheer dumb luck.

Even so, perhaps this isn’t giving Fluminense enough credit. No, they didn’t take the game to their opponent like Flamengo did, and yes, Inter were tired and hurt and generally played very badly, but Flu generally kept a tight ship at the back (though they did get sloppy towards the end) and took their rare forays forward very well, particularly in the first half, when Samuel Xavier missed a sitter of his own and only a narrow offside kept Ignácio from burying a beautiful set-piece routine. And now, they get, at least potentially, an easier opponent!

Much like Inter, Al-Hilal’s round of 16 opponent Manchester City comes with a sense of “maybe we should have seen an upset coming”. Though they rampaged through the group stage and crushed Juventus, and though they signed some new blood just in time for this tournament and finally had Rodri back, we can’t forget that something was profoundly wrong with City all season, and Al-Hilal was probably particularly well-equipped to exploit it thanks to having speedy forwards in their physical prime like Malcom. Between him, Marcos Leonardo, Kaio César (who was a huge threat after he came off the bench), and even, I guess, Renan Lodi, this team has a host of Brazilians worth looking at. Not to mention one instantly iconic fan.

It won’t be an easy quarterfinal for Fluminense; even if they’d probably much rather be facing Al-Hilal than Man City, one of the simplest ways to answer “which soccer team is better” is “which one pays its players more”, and the Saudi club still has a mountain of Saudi money behind it. (Plus, maybe they would rather have faced City; both for a chance at revenge for the 2023 Club World Cup and because there’s far more expectation that they should beat Al-Hilal.) Still, with Al-Hilal having had to play extra time on Monday, Flu should at least have the edge in terms of rest. We’ll see how much that counteracts their older legs; they’ve really seemed to run out of gas in the last few minutes of their games against European opponents, and while Al-Hilal aren’t European, their castaways from the European game are far younger than Flu’s. I guess Thiago Silva will just have to keep being absolutely imperious.

Palmeiras vs. Chelsea

Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 4, 2025

Kickoff: 9:00PM EDT / 10:00 PM BRT / 1:00 AM GMT

Quick hits: This is a rematch of the 2021 Club World Cup final, in which Palmeiras pushed Chelsea to extra time and ultimately lost to a Kai Havertz penalty. If they can atone for that on Friday, they’ll face the winner of the game above and guarantee a non-European team in the Club World Cup final, which would be pretty cool. But if there’s one Brazilian club that still needs to Show Up at this tournament, it’s Palmeiras. The other three all faced two European teams and beat at least one of them; Fluminense, in fact, went undefeated. Thanks to an all-Brazilian round of 16 matchup, Palmeiras still only have that scoreless draw with Porto to take away from this tournament, and the fairly grim game we saw against Botafogo in that all-Brazil matchup doesn’t bode well for their chances of raising the bar against better opposition. Paulinho, the hero of their last two games, has been dealing with a stress fracture in his leg for months that didn’t heal correctly after an initial surgery last December; Palmeiras are managing his minutes for this tournament and will throw him back on the operating table as soon as it’s over. Until then, unless the rest of the team can step up and rediscover how to score some fucking goals, they’ll have to hope he’s got another 30 minutes of magic in his leg.

Still, even if I’d describe his style of football as “punchable”, coach Abel Ferreira tends to find a way to make Palmeiras competitive even against superior opposition, and Chelsea have already lost once to a Brazilian club at this Club World Cup. I thought Palmeiras’ last game going to extra time might doom them fitness-wise, but then Chelsea did the same six hours later against Benfica, so they’re on even footing in that regard. I think this game is very winnable; I just have a hard time seeing how a “competitive” version of this current Palmeiras actually seriously threatens Chelsea’s goal rather than just keeping them from scoring.