Pep Guardiola and Bernardo Silva respond to new Man City Club World Cup schedule

To lift the Club World Cup on Friday Manchester City will need to win two games in a week-long jaunt to Saudi Arabia. To win the 2025 edition, they will play seven games and spend a month in the United States in June and July.

That follows confirmation from FIFA on Sunday as to how their new-look 32-team tournament will work, with games from June 15 to July 13, 2025. City will be one of 12 European entrants, with eight already confirmed, but only two are permitted from each country and the Blues and Chelsea have already secured spots from the Premier League.

The tournament will follow the format of the current 32-team World Cup, with eight groups of four playing three fixtures each. The top two will progress to the round of 16 and from there it will be a knockout competition.

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That will add more pressure to an already crowded schedule and City will be beginning their campaign just after the end of the 2024/25 season and ending it shortly before the start of the 2025/26 campaign.

Pep Guardiola and Bernardo Silva were reluctant to be too critical of the plans when speaking in Jeddah on Monday night, perhaps aware of the FIFA branding all around them in Saudi Arabia, but the Portuguese midfielder said players were not consulted over another change to the schedule and said it is the fans who will pay when the quality drops and players spend more time on the treatment table.

"No, we were not consulted but we try to do our job - and our job is to represent in the best possible way our clubs and our national teams and in this case our clubs," he said.

"The people who pay our