A crowd of 65,574 fans packed into Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Sunday for the Club World Cup Round of 16 showdown between Lionel Messi‘s Inter Miami and Paris Saint-Germain, and before long “it was abundantly clear that Messi’s new team was not in the same league as his old team.” Inter Miami “was no match” for PSG and lost 4-0 to the UEFA Champions League titleholders. Inter Miami co-owners David Beckham and Jorge and Jose Mas were at the game (MIAMI HERALD, 6/29). Sunday’s announced attendance “brought Atlanta’s four-game total to 159,886 with two matches remaining.” The next match will feature Borussia Dortmund taking on Monterrey at 9pm ET Tuesday (ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, 6/29).
MLS’ “dream of having a team continue to advance in the Club World Cup ended” with Inter Miami’s loss to a team with a much heftier roster payroll. PSG boasts a roster transfer market value of more than $1.1B, while Inter Miami’s transfer value is $77M. Inter Miami manager Javier Mascherano “didn’t offer an answer when asked how teams in MLS can catch up to teams like PSG.” Mascherano: “People that are involved in MLS, they know better than me what they have to do to progress the league and be competitive” (ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, 6/29).
Meanwhile, Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca described the 115-minute delay to his club’s Club World Cup tie with Benfica on Saturday as a “joke” and suggested that if games kept being held up for severe weather warnings, then the U.S. was “not the right place to do this competition.” The game kicked off at 4pm ET “in sweltering Charlotte heat and finally came to an end” at 8.38pm -- or 1.38am back in London. A thunderstorm nearby “was judged dangerous enough for the stadium authorities to suspend play and tell fans to take cover.” Every local lightning strike “put the start back another 30 minutes although nothing more than light rain ever fell” at Bank of America Stadium. When the teams “did re-emerge, they had been off for almost two hours.” The six match delays for severe weather conditions at the Club World Cup “have each taken place in five different cities” -- including two in Orlando -- and “among them, this in North Carolina was the second longest.” The game also featured “a small crowd of 25,979 in a stadium that holds three times that,” and “even fewer had waited the two hours to see the finale” (London TELEGRAPH, 6/29).
