> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.emeraldcityspectrum.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Seattle Sounders FIFA Club World Cup Preview - URL: https://www.emeraldcityspectrum.com/seattle-sounders-fifa-world-cup-preview-lumen-field/ - Published: 2025-06-14T00:15:11.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-08T06:19:56.000Z - Author: Corbin Smith - Tags: Analysis, Sounders, FIFA Club World Cup, PSG, Botafogo, Atletico Madrid [Embed from Getty Images](http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/2218186061?ref=emeraldcityspectrum.com) The Seattle Sounders are heading into the biggest competition in their club’s history at a trying time of the season in 2025\. On one hand, there’s a good chance two very important players will become available for selection for Sunday’s opener in group play against Botafogo in Jordan Morris and Yeimar Gomez Andrade. On the other hand, the Sounders have limped into the break, losing their last two games with a massive distraction looming over the entire team. There are major questions regarding the focus of the players at this moment in time due to the compensation conflict between the MLS and players. To say that is not the mindset desired for players heading into a major international tournament is a major understatement. Let’s explore a comprehensive preview of each of the four teams, including Seattle, in the group stage in an attempt to show out on their home turf. But first.. ### What is the FIFA Club World Cup? If this iteration of the FIFA Club World Cup seems unfamiliar, it’s because it is. For the first time in the tournament’s history, there is a full 32-team field comprised of all the continental champions in club football around the world. Reminiscent of the international FIFA World Cup that everyone knows and loves, it has eight groups of four teams where each team plays the other three in a round-robin format. The top two teams in the standings after the three games in terms of points will move on to the knockout stages. In years past, it would be just a seven-team tournament (one for each continental champion from the previous year), but going forward, the tournament will now only occur every four years, with the continental champions from the previous four years qualifying. Now let’s look at a preview of Group B… ### Seattle Sounders The Sounders come into the tournament pretty clearly as the major underdog of the group. Yes, they are a proven MLS contender year in and year out and are still the only MLS team to win the CONCACAAF Champions League/Cup. While they come in not exactly in the best run of form, they are undoubtedly the only MLS side that most believe earned their spot with the 2022 CCL win, in a major club and US Soccer accomplishment. That doesn’t mean that Seattle is necessarily the most likely MLS team to progress past the group stage of the three that qualified. In fact, most pundits believe due to a combination of a lack of star power, the form coming into the tournament, but most importantly, the teams in their group, Seattle probably is being almost immediately written off. Then you add in the drama of the last couple weeks where Sounders players, before their match against Minnesota United at home, all protested the pay structure that MLS offers its players during this tournament, in which the average player will supposedly make less per match in this massive worldwide tournament than a regular MLS match. With the undisputed best club team in the world in PSG in your group, a very pesky and talented Atletico Madrid, and one of South America’s best teams in Botafogo all in the same group as Seattle, with the distraction of the player protest, and already a team that is injured and has performed inconsistent at best in the first part of 2025, Seattle’s main objective will be to just avoid embarrassment on home turf. ### Botafogo When the biggest hope for picking up points for Seattle comes in the form of a Brazilian side from Rio de Janeiro who just won the Copa Libertadores, and the Brazilian Serie A, all within a 12-month period, that is about as damning of a proposition as trying to avoid disaster against the other two European powerhouses in the group. Most of the attention (rightly so) has been on recent UEFA Champions League winners PSG and Atletico Madrid from the Spanish La Liga, but Botafogo should not be immediately written off as having a surprise or two in them as possibly being one of the two teams who make it out of this tough group. South American sides are known for showing up really well in these international cup competitions and it would not come as a surprise to see Botafogo continue that trend at the Club World Cup in 2025. ### Atletico Madrid For much of the 2024-2025 La Liga season, it was actually Atletico Madrid that seemed the most likely to come away with a league title, even with the “Galacticos” of Real Madrid adding arguably the world’s best player in Kylian Mbappe to an already Champions League winning side. But it was actually Barcelona, with their unmatched academy products including the world sensation that everyone is talking about in Lamine Yamal, who posed the biggest threat, and eventually took the league crown in what was a very entertaining race to the very end. But even the fact that this Atletico team held their own versus two of the most talented teams in the world for the entire season shows how capable this group is, especially when it comes to cup competitions. Atletico has notoriously been scrappy, clutch, and defended really well, and this team is no different. The main difference in what sets this group apart where they have a real chance to do damage is they have the offensive firepower from players who have experienced winning the World Cup like Julian Alvarez and Antoine Griezmann. They also have the highest paid coach in professional football in Diego Simeone, and for good reason. He embodies what it means to be an Atletico player and consistently gets every drop of production out of his teams year in and year out. The only downside of their style of play would be the inability to completely dominate games offensively, and in a tournament where goal differential may prove key, that could play a major factor. They have the makings of a team that could go all the way, but also there are some elements of a team that could possibly get surprised in the group stage. ### Paris Saint Germain There’s no getting around this one…PSG is the best team in the world and if there was any doubt over that claim heading into the UEFA Champions League final against Inter, they put any shadow of a doubt to bed with a 5-0 drubbing in the sports most elite club competition up to this point. They can do it all: they dominate possession, they have a lights out goalkeeper, and they have young players with flare to produce magic. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of their season in how successful they are would be the fact that this all came on the heels of letting Kylian Mbappe go to Real Madrid, and they somehow got better. Luis Enrique is known for his pleasing style to watch where there are threats to create and score all over the field, and he now has buy-in from the entire squad, which is the hardest thing for managers to do in today’s game. If there is any sort of nitpicking, it’s that they don’t necessarily have the full-on star power for one player to take over a game, but even that is a bit of a stretch with Ousmane Dembele coming into his own as a player since moving to the French capital. They are a clear favorite in the competition and any team they face, either in the group stage or later in the knockout stages, they should be favored to defeat.