Date: Wednesday 8th
February 2022
Venue: Mohammed bin Zayed Stadium
Kick-off: 16:30 GMT
No sooner had we finished playing
Plymouth Argyle at the weekend, than our players were heading to Abu Dhabi for
this afternoon’s semi-final of the Club World Cup – at least the quick
turnaround meant less time to dwell on the fact we literally scraped past
Plymouth in the fourth round of the FA Cup. Anyway, enough said about that the better.
This afternoon’s game sees us face Al-Hilal, who qualified for the Club World Cup by winning the AFC
Champions League. Al-Hilal are fourth in the Saudi league, 13 points
behind league leaders Al- Ittihad. They seem to be in decent form too, with
just one defeat in their last eight games in all competitions, and they beat Al Jazira 6-1 in the
second round to reach the semi-finals, so their attack could cause up problems.
As for Chelsea, we sit 3rd in the
Premier League, 10 points off the leaders, who also have a game in hand of us. Ahead of the narrow win in the cup at the
weekend, we had a more comfortable win in the league against Sp*rs. In fact, it’s
a shame we can’t play them every week since they’re one of the few sides we’ve
looked motivated against.
Obviously, we
qualified for the Club World Cup by winning the Champions League last term and
come into the tournament as favourites. The weekend should serve as somewhat of
a warning for anyone assuming we’ll walk this though. Whether it’s about
mentality, arrogance, or lack of commitment, we just aren’t at our best when we’re
favourites. Start celebrating your success before you even play us though, and
we’ll gladly accept that sort of challenge and watch Havertz score on repeat
for the next 12 months. We missed out on this cup against Corinthians in the
2021 final, so hopefully that will provide some sort of motivation in the
absence of Tuchel again, otherwise, the question of whether or not he’ll make
it out for the final will be largely irrelevant.
MANAGER’S VIEWS
Going into today’s game, Al-Hilal manager Leonardo Jardim, says “I’d like to give a warning to FIFA and I find it unfair
some teams have to play four matches in eight days and other teams have to play
two matches with their teams not rested. I’m sure that the European
teams, in this case Chelsea and previously Liverpool, are always the favourites.
No doubt about that but we have
additional favouritism when Al Hilal has two days to recover and the 24 players
are all the same, but one team comes out fresh. Our victory from the previous
match mirrors that: Al Jazira had difficulties in the second half. If they were
rested the match would have been different I think, especially in the second
half.”
In the absence of
Thomas Tuchel, assistant coach Zsolt Low,
meanwhile, says
“We know Al Hilal, we
watched the game on Sunday with the coaching staff. We saw two very good teams
with a lot of quality. They came better into the game and in the end it was a
big win for them. We know they won the Asia Cup a lot of times. It’s a very
good team, we know a lot of players. They have players from different
situations. Marega from Porto we know fro mthe Champions League. We know Ighalo
from Watford in England. They have good quality up front, can score a lot of
goals. We expected a difficult game tomorrow. Al Hilal is a very
dangerorus team, a strong attacking force. Pereira, Marega. They have
experience and normally try to be offensive. We have to be solid to try. The
intensity of the Premier League we have to bring here. It’s a semi-final and of
course we have to work hard to get into the final.
We have to take the role [of favourites] after
winning the Champions League. We know we’re a good team and play a good game
but Al Hilal are very good, with an experienced coach from some big clubs. He’s
a very good coach, a very good team. We take the role as favourite but for sure
it can be a difficult game.”
SQUAD NEWS
For Al-Hilal, there are no new injury concerns.
For
Chelsea, Ben Chilwell (knee) remains out long term and Ruben
Loftus-Cheek (knock) and Reece James (hamstring) also miss out. Mason Mount is
a doubt after going off injured against Plymouth and Edouard Mendy is unlikely
to take part in this one having only just finished celebrating Sadio Mane winning
the Africa Cup of Nations.
TEAMS
AL-HILAL
(Possible line-up): Al Maiouf; Abdul Hamid, Hyun-Soo, Ali Bulaihi, Al Shahrani;
Kanno, Cuellar; Marega, Pereira, Al Dawsari; Ighalo
CHELSEA (Possible line-up): Kepa; Chalobah, Thiago
Silva, Rudiger, Alonso; Kovacic, Kante, Hudson-Odoi; Werner, Havertz, Ziyech
CURRENT FORM (ALL)
AL-HILAL: WWWWDW
CHELSEA: WWLDWW
OTHER STUFF
- Chelsea
have never won the Club World Cup
- Chelsea
last played in the competition after winning the 2012 Champions League final
(losing to Corinthians)
- Al-Hilal
are unbeaten in their last 6 games
- Chelsea
are unbeaten in their last 3 games competitions
- Al-Hilal
have lost once in their last 8 games in all competitions
PREDICTION
Sportsmole: Al-Hilal 1-2 Chelsea
