The heat wave in Philadelphia will hit the Juventus-Wydad Club World Cup game

The main attractions at Sunday’s Club World Cup game between Italy’s Juventus and Morocco’s Wydad at Lincoln Financial Field (noon, DAZN) will be Juve’s U.S. men’s national team stars, Weston McKennie and Tim Weah, and the return of Wydad’s boisterous fans.

But there will also be a less-welcome guest: the heat wave that started to ramp up in town on Saturday.

The forecast temperature at kickoff is 91 degrees, and for the final whistle at around 2 p.m. it could hit 94. That will mean a hydration break in each half, a contingency FIFA is well accustomed to by now. (So accustomed, in fact, that it sold a sponsorship for the moment to a drinks company.)

Many games have already seen high temperatures, and thunderstorm delays in venues including Orlando, Cincinnati, and East Rutherford, N.J. But this heat wave will bring the worst conditions seen yet, with high temperatures expected to hit 100 or more on Monday and Tuesday.

Fortunately for Philadelphia, the next two games are 9 p.m. kickoffs: England’s Chelsea vs. Tunisia’s Espérance on Tuesday, and Spain’s Real Madrid vs. Austria’s Red Bull Salzburg on Thursday. The latter might draw the biggest crowd of any game here, because of Madrid’s fame and superstars.

On Sunday, fans will be allowed to bring in a sealed bottle of water, or an empty bottle up to one liter in size (around 32 ounces) to fill inside the gates. And how will the players deal with it?

» READ MORE: The Club World Cup in Philly serves as a reminder that soccer is more than the English Premier League

“We already experienced one game [that] was quite hot, to be honest,” Juve midfielder Teun Koopmeiners said Sunday evening at Lincoln Financial Field, when it was hot enough already. The bianconeri, so named for their black-and-white-striped jerseys, beat the United Arab Emirates’ Al Ain, 5-0, this past Wednesday in Washington.

“Also, the air, it makes you feel like you’re playing in a sauna,” he continued, with D.C. infamous for its humidity. “But we have to deal with it. The opponent is also playing in it. So it’s not going to be an excuse.”

Asked if the heat might affect the team’s tactics, Koopmeiners said: “Maybe for the coach, with the substitutes, he needs to look a little bit more to [that], because maybe the players are going to be a little bit quicker tired. But I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.”

A few minutes later, it was time to ask that coach.

“It’s the same condition for both the squads,” Juve manager Igor Tudor said at his news conference. “Of course, we’re going to recommend to the guys to stay hydrated. But we need to focus on the game — with the ball, without the ball — and do our best.”

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Koopmeiners is good friends with McKennie and Weah, and he praised their contributions on and off the field.

“They’re really great guys,” the Dutch national team veteran said. “They’re also really good players, which is also really important, but the persons behind [the play] are great. … I’m really close with them inside the team, so it’s nice for them to play at the ‘home’ field.”

He revealed he has a sort of local tie, too: family in Davidsville, Pa., out west in Somerset County, near Johnstown.

“So for me, it’s also a little bit like a home game,” he said, adding that “to be honest, I love American people.”

» READ MORE: Fans of Morocco’s Wydad AC brought a party like ‘no one has ever seen’ to their first game at Lincoln Financial Field

It will be McKennie’s first game in Philadelphia since 2019, when he played in the Concacaf Gold Cup for the U.S. men’s national team and scored in a 1-0 win over Curaçao at the Linc. Weah’s only previous game in town was a 2018 friendly at Subaru Park, where he scored his first U.S. goal in a 5-0 rout.

Alas, neither was among the players Juventus made available on Sunday. They spoke Wednesday, after not only the game but a visit to the White House where they were stuck in President Donald Trump’s attempt to bait them into talking about transgender women in sports.

“They told us that we have to go and I had no choice but to go so I showed up,” Weah said. “I guess it was a cool experience being in the White House for the first time — it’s always wonderful, but I’m not one for politics so it wasn’t that exciting. I was caught by surprise, honestly. It was a bit weird.”

The mood was far different on Sunday, with a mix of the world’s media asking Koopmeiners about the game. He said he’s looking forward to a first matchup against an African opponent in Juventus’ first Club World Cup.

“That’s the beauty about football,” he said. “Instead of only in Europe, you play against countries from all over the world, and those experiences you take with you for your whole life. And it makes you a better football player, because every culture is different, every sport is different, and when all these cultures and sports bring each other together, you will learn from it and it’s a great experience.”

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