EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Cole Palmer scored twice and fed João Pedro for a goal as Chelsea overwhelmed Paris Saint-Germain in the first half and beat the European champions 3-0 on Sunday in the final of the first expanded FIFA Club World Cup.
Palmer had almost identical left-footed goals from just inside the penalty area in the 22nd and 30th minutes, then sent a through pass that enabled João Pedro to chip goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma in the 43d for his third goal in two starts with the Blues.
A 23-year-old who joined Chelsea from Manchester City two years ago, Palmer scored 18 goals this season.
PSG finished a man short after João Neves was given a red card in the 84th minute for pulling down Marc Cucurella by his hair. After a testy final few minutes, the teams needed to be separated as PSG coach Luis Enrique and Donnarumma pushed João Pedro near the center circle.
A heavy favorite who had outscored opponents 16-1, PSG had been looking to complete a quadruple after winning Ligue 1, the Coupe de France and its first Champions League title.
Before a tournament-high crowd of 81,188 at MetLife Stadium that included U.S. President Donald Trump, Chelsea showed the energy of a fourth day of rest after its semifinal, one more than PSG.
Chelsea players celebrate after winning the FIFA Club World Cup on Sunday.
(Adam Hunger / Associated Press)
Chelsea had finished fourth in the Premier League and won the third-tier UEFA Conference League. The Blues took the world title for the second time after 2021, when it was an seven-team event. The Blues earned $128,435,000 to $153,815,000 in prize money, the amount depending on a participation fee FIFA has not disclosed.
PSG had not lost by three goals since a 4-1 Champions League defeat at Newcastle in October 2023.
“I was in shock,” the veteran winger said. “It’s very beautiful here. I like it very much. One day we [went] bowling. And played mini golf. I was thinking when I finish football, to come to live.”
Then there’s the soccer, where not all the memories have been good ones.
After contributing two assists to a win in PSG’s tournament opener, Kvaratskhelia was unable to get any of his game-high five shots past goalkeeper John Victor in Thursday’s 1-0 loss to Brazilian club Botafogo before an announced crowd of 53,699 at the Rose Bowl.
The upset, the tournament’s most shocking result so far, snapped PSG’s win streak at six games in all competition, marked the first time it has been held scoreless since March 5 and leaves in doubt the team’s spot in the second round. Botafogo (2-0) leads the four-team group with PSG and Atlético Madrid (both 1-1) tied for second with a game remaining. With just two teams moving on, PSG will need a victory over the Sounders on Monday in Seattle to advance.
A draw would also send it through if Atlético Madrid loses its final group-stage match with Botafogo.
It wasn’t supposed to be this hard for PSG, the reigning French and European champion and a heavy pre-tournament favorite. Botafogo, which won last year’s Copa Libertadores, is the reigning South American champion, but it is just eighth in Brazil’s 20-team Serie A 11 matches into the current season.
Whether Thursday’s upset helps the struggling Club World Cup find an audience, it’s far too early to tell. But it can’t hurt, especially since Inter Miami also made history Thursday with a second-half goal from Lionel Messi in a 2-1 win over FC Porto, marking the first victory by an MLS club over a European rival in a competitive match.
Igor Jesus of Botafogo celebrates after scoring against Paris Saint-Germain in FIFA Club World Cup group play Thursday.
(Jam Media / Getty Images)
The Club World Cup is the largest and most lucrative global club competition in soccer history but attendance has lagged in the early going, averaging just 36,433 through 20 matches. Nearly half the seats have been empty.
Six games have drawn more than 50,000 fans, including both of Paris Saint-Germain’s matches at the Rose Bowl. But two got fewer than 5,300, with just 3,412 showing up in Orlando for a game between South Africa’s Mamelodi Sundowns and South Korea’s Ulsan HD and 5,282 for Pachuca-RB Salzburg at TQL Stadium in Cincinnati.
And that’s despite the fact that FIFA, alarmed at the slow pace of ticket sales, slashed prices on the eve of the tournament.
“The atmosphere was a bit strange,” Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca said after his team beat LAFC in its tournament opener before nearly 50,000 empty seats at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium. “This is a world tournament. It deserves more.”
That the competition hasn’t produced more interest is largely FIFA’s fault. World soccer’s governing body has been unable to convince fans or players that the tournament — a 32-team, month-long competition wedged between the end of one European season and the start of the next — was necessary, or even desired.
And until Thursday the tournament had produced little real excitement, with three of the first nine matches — including the opener featuring Messi and Inter Miami — ending in scoreless draws while Bayern Munich, ranked sixth in the world in the Opta Power Rankings, beat Auckland City, ranked 5,068 places lower, 10-0.
With many games kicking off at midday or in the early afternoon, the hot and sticky summer weather has also been a factor on both the play and the attendance. Powerful Real Madrid, playing with Kylian Mbappe in 89-degree temperatures and 71% humidity in suburban Miami, struggled to a draw against Saudi club Al-Hilal while Atlético Madrid wilted under bright summer skies at the Rose Bowl in its first game.
“Playing in this heat is impossible,” Atlético’s Marcos Llorente told reporters. “The heat is terrible. My toes hurt, even my toenails.
“No one in Europe is used to it. I couldn’t stop or start running. It’s unbelievable, but since it’s the same for everyone there’s no point complaining.”
It will be no cooler next year when the real World Cup returns to North America for the first time in 32 years. And in that sense, this summer’s tournament is making good on one of its aims by exposing national team players to the kind of weather, travel and atmosphere they can expect then.
“We’re going to come prepared next year,” said Inter Milan’s Marcus Thuram, who played in the 2022 World Cup final for France. “It’s good preparation to manage the jet lag. America is very big. You get can a taste of what you will get next year. It’s a great preparation.”
As for Thursday’s game, Kvaratskhelia, PSG’s most dangerous attacker, was frustrated twice in the first 10 minutes, with Victor batting down his first shot and the second curling wide of the far post. That allowed Igor Jesus to put Botafogo in front to stay shortly before the intermission, splitting a pair of PSG defenders to run on to Jefferson Savarino’s perfectly weighted through ball, then beating keeper Gianluigi Donnarumma from the top of the box.
It was the first goal PSG has allowed in 366 minutes in all competition and it was all Botafogo would need, although Savarino nearly doubled the lead eight minutes into the second half, putting a strong header on goal that Donnarumma batted down.
Bradley Barcola appeared to tie the score in the 79th minute, but two PSG players were well offside on the play. Then on the first touch of stoppage time, Kvaratskhelia sent a free kick just over the crossbar.
PSG dominated statistically, controlling the ball for three-quarters of the game, making more than three times as many passes, taking 10 corners to one for the Brazilians and outshooting Botafogo 16-4. But all four of Botafogo’s shots were on target while Victor was called on to make just two saves.
Times staff writer Nathan Solis contributed to this story.
Two men showed up at Adrien Frier’s Beverly Hills home Thursday afternoon and carried an unusual package onto the backyard patio, where a white-clothed table waited.
Frier, France’s consul general in Los Angeles, was preparing to host a party and the 25-pound sterling silver objet d’art was the guest of honor. Standing next to the replica of the UEFA Champions League trophy, the second-most prestigious prize in the sport and one which bestows upon its owner the title of best club team in the world, was the closest Frier had come to such soccer greatness.
“What I really want to do right now,” Frier whispered, “is take it and bring it upstairs.”
That wasn’t going to happen. Paris Saint-Germain, the French club that owns both the real and replica Champions League trophies for the next year, had made winning them a quintessential quest. Now that they have the trophies, they intend to make good use of them.
After an evening with the consul general, the trophy was carried a couple of miles east to a PSG pop-up store on Melrose, where it posed for more selfies than Taylor Swift. Later it will follow the team to Seattle, then perhaps Philadelphia or Atlanta.
Only five clubs in the world sold more jerseys than PSG last year. Touring the U.S. with the Champions League trophy during the monthlong FIFA Club World Cup this summer figures to give those sales a boost while raising the team’s profile in one of the world’s fastest-growing soccer markets.
“Now it’s all about capitalizing,” said Jerry Newman, PSG’s chief digital and innovation officer. “It just accelerates our growth in terms of where we go, in terms of growing the club.”
Paris Saint-Germain returned to the field Sunday, beating Spain’s Atlético Madrid 4-0 before a sun-baked Rose Bowl crowd of 80,619 in a first-round game of the Club World Cup. It was PSG’s first game since routing Inter Milan in last month’s Champions League final.
“It’s difficult to win it,” said Victoriano Melero, PSG’s chief executive officer, as the Champions League trophy peeked over his shoulder from its perch on Frier’s patio. “To stay at the top, that’s the most difficult.”
Winning the trophy once, Melero said was not “the ultimate goal. It was the first goal.”
That’s a bit of revisionist history because one of the first things Nasser Al-Khelaifi did after taking over the club in 2011 was put together a five-year plan that was supposed to end with PSG hoisting the Champions League prize.
At first he threw money at the problem, signing Zlatan Ibrahimovic. When Ibrahimovic moved on, Al-Khelaifi replaced him with Neymar, Kylian Mbappe and finally Lionel Messi, spending nearly a third of an unsustainable $842-million payroll on those three alone in 2021-22. Yet for all that spending, the team made it to the Champions League final just once.
So when Mbappe followed Neymar and Messi out of Paris last summer, the team doubled down on a plan to develop players rather than simply buying them. The centerpiece of that plan was a $385-million training base in the western suburbs of Paris that included training, education and accommodation facilities for 140 academy players.
PSG is still spending; it’s wage bill last season was estimated at more than $600 million by the Football Business Journal. And the Athletic reported the team has spent more than $2.6 billion on new players in 14 years under Al-Khelaifi.
The emphasis now, however, is on the team and not on any individuals. And it appears to be working. With a roster that averaged less than 24 years of age, PSG won every competition it entered this season, rolled through the knockout stages of the Champions League, then beat Inter Milan 5-0 in the most one-sided final in history, becoming the second-youngest European champion ever.
Paris Saint-Germain celebrates its Champions League title victory over Inter Milan last month.
(Martin Meissner / Associated Press)
“The change the chairman made, saying the star needs to be the club and not the players, that’s what happened on the pitch,” said Fabien Allègre, the club’s chief brand officer.
Four players — three of them French — scored at least 15 goals in all competition last season; only one was older than 23. Five players finished in double digits for assists; the top two were under 22. And the philosophy of egalite and fraternite wasn’t just reserved for the people in uniform. When PSG made the Champions League final, Al-Khelaifi flew all 600 team employees to Munich and bought them tickets to the game.
“We all contribute to the success of the club,” Melero said. “The French mentality, they don’t very much like when it’s bling-bling, when it’s shine. But when it’s solidarity, it’s collective, they love it.
“We’re really a family.”
But PSG is also a business, one that has to profit off its success. For years Allègre has partnered with fashion, music and sportswear companies in an effort to make PSG a lifestyle brand connected to a soccer club rather than the other way around. The team’s new emphasis on youth will help with that.
“Our focus is really to stand for being the club of the new generation, to understand the code of the new generation of fans or sport, not only football,” Allègre said. “We built our brand. Now we have the statement when it comes to the pitch.”
“The brand itself is already attractive,” Melero added. But being the best club team in the world “is like a launch pad. It’s just incredible the exposure you’ve got.”
Fabián Ruiz gave PSG the only goal it would need Sunday, beating Atlético keeper Jan Oblak from the top of the box in the 20th minute. Vitinha doubled the lead in first-half stoppage time with a low right-footed shot between two defenders from the center of the penalty area.
Teenager Senny Mayulu, who scored the final goal in the Champions League final, made it 3-0 in the 87th minute, 11 minutes after Clement Lenglet’s second yellow card left Atlético to finish the game short-handed. Kang-in Lee closed out the scoring on the final touch of the game, converting a penalty kick seven minutes into stoppage time.
Across town, fans who had gathered for a watch party at PSG House on Melrose celebrated with all the hardware PSG won this season, including a Champions League trophy that is only beginning to show its shine.
