Palmeiras and Botafogo bring familiar names to their Club World Cup game in Philadelphia

Perhaps it’s fate that Palmeiras has come to Philadelphia for Saturday’s Club World Cup round of 16 game, an all-Brazilian matchup with Botafogo at high noon (TNT, Univision 65, DAZN).

For starters, people here might come to know Palmeiras as more than part of a social media controversy when the Eagles visited their city, São Paulo, last year. Palmeiras’ jerseys are green, and their crosstown rival Corinthians — whose stadium the Eagles played in — don’t like it when anyone wears the color there. But everyone was welcome for the Birds’ visit.

In fact, Palmeiras is a quite popular soccer team. It was ranked this month by Switzerland’s International Centre for Sports Studies as No. 4 among Brazilian clubs for overall social media followers, with 23.5 million. (Rio de Janeiro’s Flamengo, which played two group stage games in Philadelphia, is No. 1 with 66.4 million; and Corinthians is tops in São Paulo with 41.6 million.)

When the club was founded in 1914 by Italian expats, they called it Palestra Italia — a phrase recognizable to any Philly sports fan. (In 1927, Penn named its new basketball arena with the Greek word for gymnasium.) During World War II, with Brazil opposing Italy and the Axis powers, the team changed its name in 1942 to “Palestra São Paulo,” then to Palmeiras.

Fans of the Alviverde — green-and-white in Portuguese — from Brazil and the U.S. have spread joy throughout the Club World Cup. While Palmeiras was playing its first two games in North Jersey, fans partied from Times Square to the Brooklyn Bridge before heading to MetLife Stadium. On Friday evening, they introduced themselves to Philadelphia with a rally on the Art Museum steps.

In the group stage, their team tied Portugal’s Porto and beat Egypt’s Al Ahly, then went to Miami and staged a dramatic late comeback to tie Lionel Messi’s Inter, 2-2. That result won first place in the group.

Botafogo, meanwhile, traveled from its home in Rio as the reigning winner of the Copa Libertadores, South America’s continental club championship. Based on the West Coast for the group stage, they started in Seattle with a 2-1 win over the Sounders. Then they flew down to Pasadena for two games at the Rose Bowl: a 1-0 upset of France’s Paris Saint-Germain, the reigning European champion, and a 1-0 loss to Spain’s Atlético Madrid.

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The win over PSG marked the first time since 2012 that a reigning Libertadores winner beat a reigning Champions League winner at a Club World Cup. The loss to Atlético was narrow enough for Botafogo to finish second in its group on a goal-difference tiebreaker.

Both teams have multiple players who used to play in MLS. Botafogo’s are wingers Jefferson Savarino (Real Salt Lake) and Santiago Rodríguez (New York City FC), striker Elias Manoel (New York Red Bulls), and central midfielder Gregore (Inter Miami), though he’s suspended because of yellow card accumulation.

Midfielder Thiago Almada (Atlanta United) was part of the team that won the Libertadores. Then he moved to France’s Lyon in a deal that sparked much controversy, because American businessman John Textor owns both teams.

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Midfielder and captain Marlon Freitas also used to play in the U.S., with the former Fort Lauderdale strikers of the North American Soccer League’s second era in 2015.

“I am very happy to return [to the U.S.], and to represent the Botafogo shirt in this competition,” Freitas said at Friday’s practice, noting that his year in Florida was the first time he moved away from Brazil. “I am happy that MLS is growing with great players. The Strikers were an important club for me — I have great affection for the club.”

Though none of the MLS alumni spoke Friday, former Manchester United defender Alex Telles did, and he complimented the group.

“The more experienced players find it easier to play with their experience, but also the players who have played a lot in MLS, have played difficult games, and have more experience to face games like these,” he said. “We have many examples like Almada, like Savarino, like Santi Rodríguez — many players who were here [in MLS] and are doing a lot of good work at Botafogo. So I think the players here have enough quality to be in any country.”

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Palmeiras, a three-time Libertadores winner and 12-time Brazilian champion, has two former MLS players in its squad: striker Facundo Torres (Orlando City) and centerback Micael (Houston Dynamo). Their manager, Abel Ferreira, praised the league for its rising level and said that Miami game was the latest proof of it.

“Over the last 10 to 15 years, this is a league that has grown substantially,” he said. “I believe that football is always navigating order and chaos. They [in MLS] have these very organized players that find these passing lines, which is why we came for Micael and Facundo Torres, and which is why so many local clubs here from the United States are going to Brazil for their players as well. And they come here and they perform really well.”

Along with owning Botafogo and Lyon, Textor owns Belgium’s Daring Brussels. He has also been a part-owner of England’s Crystal Palace with a group that includes 76ers principal owner and managing partner Josh Harris.

Textor has been in hot water with some of Europe’s soccer authorities, and his departure from Palace is part of why. Lyon and Palace both qualified for the Europa League, Europe’s second-tier club competition, and continental rules bar teams with the same owner from being in the same competition.

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The Missouri native was already in the process of selling when the season ended, and pressure from governing body UEFA accelerated that. On Monday, Textor agreed to a deal with New York Jets owner Woody Johnson to buy the stake.

At the same time, Textor was dealing with a French league investigation into whether debt-ridden Lyon was complying with the rules. He claimed that selling his Palace stake would clean things up, but the authorities didn’t buy it — and forced Lyon into relegation to the second division.

Textor isn’t entirely popular among Botafogo fans, either. But there is no denying that his investment has delivered results on the field. In 2024, the club won its first Brazilian title since 1995 and the first Copa Libertadores title in its then-120-year history. That’s how it qualified for the Club World Cup.

It was a huge deal, as you might expect. Though Botafogo has long been considered one of Brazil’s major teams, it was the only one from Rio in that group to have never won the continent’s biggest prize. Legendary former players including Garrincha, Jairzinho, and Carlos Alberto never did, nor did more recent stars such as Clarence Seedorf and Diego Costa.