Key events
Lineups: Mbappe is …
… not starting but might appear later.
Weston McKennie and Timothy Weah, Juve’s US players who have bypassed a chance to face Guatemala in the Gold Cup semifinals to be in this event are also on the bench.
Real Madrid: Thibaut Courtois; Dean Huijsen, Aurélien Tchouaméni, Antonio Rüdiger; Fran Garcia, Arda Güler, Federico Valverde, Jude Bellingham, Trent Alexander-Arnold; Vinícius Júnior, Gonzalo García.
Fifa’s site believes this to be a 4-4-2 with Alexander-Arnold at the back, but more likely, the former Liverpool man won’t be spending much time near his own goal unless something’s going wrong.
Juventus: Michele Di Gregorio; Lloyd Kelly, Daniele Rugani, Pierre Kalulu; Andrea Cambiaso, Khephren Thuram, Manuel Locatelli, Alberto Costa; Kenan Yildiz, Randal Kolo Muani, Francisco Conceição.
The European squads have been rotating a bit because they think it’s hot in the USA. Speaking of which …
Preamble
Well, this tournament got interesting last night, didn’t it?
For those who didn’t stay up until almost midnight Eastern time or until nearly dawn in Europe, Al-Hilal won the Game of the Century. Each time Manchester City came back to tie the game and steer it toward a penalty shootout in which you would have favored the English titans, Al-Hilal found a goal out of nowhere and reclaimed the lead.
Today? Just two big European teams, one of whom has a couple of players back in their home country of the USA. On paper, Juventus won’t have much of a chance against Real Madrid, but what chance did Al-Hilal have last night? Strange things happen in the heat of the USA.