Saturday sees Man City take on Crystal Palace in the Premier League, and it will be interesting to see what XI Pep Guardiola picks now that he knows who the club’s opponents will be in the Club World Cup semi-final next Tuesday.
Erling Haaland is expected to miss the English top-flight match in order to be in the right physical state to take on Urawa Red Diamonds, who stand between them and a potential Club World Cup final date with either Brazilian outfit, Fluminense, or Egyptian side, Al Ahly.
The latter dumped Al Ittihad out of the competition, denying the likes of Karim Benzema, Fabinho and N’Golo Kante a shot at becoming world champions.
Urawa Red Diamonds have been in patchy form of late, losing the J League Cup Final and a number of league matches in the last couple of months, however, those have been peppered with some big wins, including in their last CWC game against Liga MX outfit, Club Leon.
By the time they face off against Man City, both clubs will be aware of which team they will face in the final, given that the other semi-final takes place 24 hours earlier on Monday evening UK time.
Guardiola and his side will surely fancy their chances of making another slice of history for the Cityzens, but complacency will be their undoing.
The Urawa coach Maciej Skorża has won a game against Pep .