The 2025 FIFA Club World Cup is set for a heavyweight European quarter-final clash on Saturday as Paris Saint-Germain take on Bayern Munich in Atlanta.
Champions League winners PSG thrashed Inter Miami 4-0 in the round of 16, but face a much sterner test in the last eight.
Both of these teams are fallible, having already lost a game at this Club World Cup tournament. In the group stage, PSG lost 1-0 to Botafogo, while Bayern were beaten by the same scoreline by Benfica.
PSG’s defeat was the only blemish on an otherwise excellent recent record.They have won eight of their last nine matches in all competitions, conceding only four goals in the process. Botafogo’s goal is the only one they have let in during their Club World Cup campaign.
Bayern have looked rather less secure at the back; their only clean sheet at the 2025 Club World Cup came in a 10-0 win over lowly Auckland City. They have shipped four goals in their last three games, including two in their round-of-16 match victory over Flamengo, a game in which they lost the battle.
The German side have won their last four games against PSG, though, with all of those meetings coming since 2021 in the Champions League. The last team to win five in a row against PSG was Rennes, doing so between 2007 and 2009 in Ligue 1 (a run of six wins).
Their last meeting – a 1-0 win for Bayern in November 2024 – was the only game in the Luis Enrique era that PSG have both lost and had less possession than their opponent (42.9%) in the same match.
PSG have also lost half of their matches against German sides under Luis Enrique (3/6 – two defeats vs Borussia Dortmund and one vs Bayern). If they suffer defeat here, they’ll have lost as many games against German opponents (four in seven games) under their current manager as they have against opponents from their native France (four in 84 games).
However, they have improved a lot recently. They have gone eight straight games across all competitions in which they have limited their opponents to under one expected goal and fewer than 10 attempts.
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