After a rare season without a trophy, Manchester City aims to win the Club World Cup

For most English Premier League teams, finishing third and reaching the FA Cup final would be a great season. But for Manchester City, things are different.

England’s richest and most powerful club just wrapped up a season in which — gasp — it didn’t win any trophies for the first time in eight years. Every year since, it took home at least one title from the Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup, or League Cup. And last year, it added a first Club World Cup title to the mantel.

These are the standards in east Manchester these days, fueled by billions of dollars from the United Arab Emirates that buy some of the world’s biggest stars. The owners, City Football Group, also operate a network of teams around the world (including MLS’s New York City FC) that aim to send talent up the pipeline while also chasing their own trophies.

City’s big stars have made the trip to this Club World Cup: striker Erling Haaland, midfielders Phil Foden and Rodrigo, and defenders John Stones and Ruben Dias. The summer’s new signings are also here, midfielders Tijjani Reijnders and Rayan Cherki and defender Rayan Aït-Nouri.

The sky blue-tinged spotlight lands on Philadelphia on Wednesday, when City plays its tournament opener against Morocco’s Wydad at Lincoln Financial field (noon, DAZN). Everyone around the world who follows the club wants to know how seriously it will take the event, after another grueling campaign in England and Europe.

Veteran midfielder Bernardo Silva took the subject head-on.

» READ MORE: The Club World Cup is controversial. Could Philadelphia’s games make it a success?

“This is a very important competition for us,” he said. “Obviously, the amount of games, we already talked about this. But now that we’re here, and it’s such an important competition with teams from all around the world, we’re going to respect, a lot, the competition. And we’re going to give our best to go the furthest possible, which is win the competition.”

Silva’s firm tone of voice added more heft to the words, and he said the feeling is shared across the locker room.

“Definitely, definitely,” he said. “We’ve proven in the past it’s a very competitive squad, a very competitive dressing room, and we don’t accept defeat easily. What happened last season, we don’t accept it, and we want to turn things around as quickly as possible to try and go and win trophies.”

He called this first edition of the expanded Club World Cup “something new, but something that I think will be very beautiful to try and be the first team to win this World Cup. So we’re going to give our best.”

» READ MORE: Where to watch the FIFA Club World Cup in Philly: 11 bars for serious soccer fans

Union teen phenom Cavan Sullivan will be in the stands for the game, watching the team he’ll join in a few years. City recruited him hard, and the Union had to work hard to convince Sullivan to turn pro here instead of in Europe.

In the end, all sides agreed to a deal that will see Sullivan move to England after the 2027 MLS season for a preset transfer fee of $5 million. Both teams aren’t officially allowed to say that, but the family has spoken openly about it, and it’s well-known on both sides of the Atlantic.

The 15-year-old will also spend some time in Manchester in July, training with one of City’s youth squads. That’s part of the deal, too. It will be awkward for him to leave town in the middle of the Union’s season, but the plan is the only game he’ll miss is the July 26 contest at Colorado.

Given the legalities, it wouldn’t have been much use to ask famed City manager Pep Guardiola directly about Sullivan during his news conference at the Linc on Tuesday evening. But it’s also no secret that Guardiola loves visiting the United States, whether on City’s summer exhibition tours or just on his own on vacation.

» READ MORE: Before the Club World Cup’s fireworks, Cavan Sullivan helped the Union offer some of their own in a dramatic win

So the question went this way: Does he get involved in City Football Group’s scouting of prospects in the United States?

“No, I don’t have time,” Guardiola said. “I would love to have 24 hours a day, but I don’t have time.”

But he knows they’re out there, and that Sullivan isn’t the only one who might play in the Premier League someday.

“The United States have I don’t know how many sports,” Guardiola said, though rest assured he knows some well — not just soccer, but basketball in particular. He was courtside at an NBA Finals game in Boston last June just a over a week after the 2023-24 Premier League season ended.

“You see the universities, how they take care of the development for the young kids, to play different sports and have to be able to choose,” he said. “So I think there’s no better place, I would say, to become an athlete in different competitions [with] opportunities you have here.”

There’s no doubt that Wydad is a big underdog, but their fans are going to have fun with it. A few dozen of them gathered in LOVE Park on Tuesday afternoon, with a colorful array of drums and flags.

Some of them came from afar, and some of them came from around here. Among the latter was 15-year-old Abdul Anissi, who lives near Fishtown.

“You don’t really get Wydad coming to you, especially Philadelphia, every day,” he said. “This is a very nice opportunity for them to come to us. … We’re not expecting to win, of course, but we expect to at least do well.”

» READ MORE: Flamengo and Espérance fans lit up the city, then the Linc’s first game of the Club World Cup

A few fans presented a customized jersey for Mayor Cherelle L. Parker to City Representative Jazelle Jones. She was happy to receive another sign of the diversity of the world’s game.

“Oh, I love it,” Jones said. “It’s an international event, and different cultures actually weave the fabric. Think about putting together a quilt — it’s all the communities, all the neighborhoods. We’re a very welcoming city, a World Heritage City, so this is great for us.”