Vinícius Júnior leads Real Madrid to a 3-0 rout of Red Bull Salzburg before 64,000 fans at the Linc

The noise met the hype from the moment Real Madrid’s players started their pregame warmups at Lincoln Financial Field.

When the club’s famed anthem played a few minutes before kickoff, the crowd clad in even-more-famed white jerseys rose from the stands and belted it out.

And once the game began, it also lived up to expectations. Vinícius Júnior’s wondergoal in the 40th minute opened the scoring to send Real on to a 3-0 win.

Madrid dominated the first half in every way but the scoreboard, holding a 7-2 advantage in shots before Vinícius’ strike finally went in. Salzburg defended resolutely, doing its best to play the high-pressing defense that has been Red Bull’s soccer trademark for so long. But they knew it was a big risk to go all-out against Real’s superstars, so they also spent their fair share of time defending deep.

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Vinícius set up Real’s second goal with another fierce charge forward in first-half stoppage time. Just as he was being knocked off the ball by Salzburg centerback Kouakou Gadou, he was able to backheel a pass to an onrushing Federico Valverde for the finish.

“That was a very nice assist,” Vinícius said. “I think it was one of the nicest I’ve ever given in this shirt, and especially for ‘Fede,’ who always cheers me on throughout the game.”

Salzburg fought gamely in the second half, but simply did not have the talent to finish chances. The club that developed Manchester City’s Erling Haaland, Liverpool’s Sadio Mané, and Borussia Dortmund’s Karim Adeyemi — all while Union sporting director Ernst Tanner ran the youth academy, by the way — doesn’t have a striker that good these days.

Madrid has a bagful of them, and one is a young rising star from its academy. Gonzalo García, 21, capped off the scoring in the 84th with another dash past Salzburg’s back line, and though he was forced wide right by a defender, he turned and lofted a sublime chip over goalkeeper Christian Zawieschitzky.

Madrid topped its group, which was always expected. But the road there wasn’t always easy, as Saudi Arabia’s Al Hilal pulled off a 1-1 tie in the opener. Now Los Merengues are rolling into a round of 16 game against Italy’s Juventus.

“We are happy to finish first in the group,” midfielder-turned-defender Aurélien Tchouaméni said. “The first half against Al Hilal wasn’t our best, but each game and each minute we’ve gotten better. We have to keep raising our level, because we’re going to see teams [in the knockout rounds] that are increasingly capable of creating problems for us.”

There were a few red-clad Salzburg fans scattered amid the merengue masses, and every once in a while the cameras got them on the video board.

Tanner wasn’t dressed in team colors, and the players he watched weren’t ones he recruited. But he still knows some of the club’s executives well, and wasn’t going to miss his former team’s visit to his new hometown.

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“There are not too many of them [that he knows] in Salzburg anymore, because it has been almost seven years since I was there,” Tanner told The Inquirer. “But I still root for Salzburg, of course, because it’s literally the next town from my home [Traunstein, Germany]. Even as a kid I was going there. So I’m still interested.”

Tanner knows Salzburg’s manager Thomas Letsch especially well. While Tanner ran the club’s youth academy from 2012-18, Letsch worked in a variety of coaching roles from 2012-15. He left for other opportunities after that, then returned in January to take the big job.

“We are always still in touch,” Letsch said in his pregame news conference Wednesday, when there was time to bring the subject up. That included the day Salzburg flew to the U.S., when coincidentally Tanner was returning from a trip to Austria. They all ended up on the same flight to Frankfurt, Germany before going their separate ways across the Atlantic.

“I also visited the Union one time, so I know about the facilities and know a little bit about the city and especially about the club,” Letsch said. “So it’s nice to be here.”

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He did not say whether his visit here was just a courtesy, but Letsch’s name is well-known in Chester: he was a candidate to become the Union’s manager after Jim Curtin was fired.

It became a moot point when Salzburg made its offer in mid-December, and it’s even more moot now thanks to Bradley Carnell’s success.

Since Tanner’s time, Salzburg has been world-renowned for developing big-time prospects. Though they don’t have a truly world-class one right now, the current front office has continued a trend Tanner knows well: scouting countries that aren’t normally seen as talent hotbeds. Attacking midfielder Oscar Gloukh is from Israel, for example, and fellow playmaker Dorgeles Nene is one of multiple players from Mali.

“If you are a team like Salzburg, out of a country [Austria] which is not necessarily one of the top football countries, yeah, you need to do things differently,” Tanner said. “If you do the same like everybody else, you will be basically beaten with more quality. That was one of the reasons why we went to Africa [to scout] … We went to minor countries in Europe, [and] we found players there where the competition was not that big.”

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Salzburg exited the tournament in the group stage after beating Mexico’s Pachuca and tying Al Hilal. They qualified off FIFA’s computer rankings, not by winning a European title, so who knows when or if they’ll be back in a Club World Cup. But at least while they were here, they were able to show they can compete on this big stage.

“Every year is different from us — every summer we take a little step back so we can go forward again,” said Maurits Kjærgaard, one of the team’s rare veterans. (He arrived just after the Union sold Brenden Aaronson to Salzburg in early 2021). “We do it differently than other clubs are doing, but this is how we do it, and I think we have been really successful.”

Here’s a look at the Club World Cup’s round of 16 schedule. Teams are listed with the rank of the group they came from, and games are listed in order of the bracket to show what the matchups might be afterward.

1A. Palmeiras (Brazil) vs. 2B. Botafogo (Brazil): Saturday, noon in Philadelphia (TNT, Univision 65, DAZN)

1C. Benfica (Portugal) vs. 2D. Chelsea (England): Saturday, 4 p.m. in Charlotte, N.C. (DAZN)

1E. Inter Milan (Italy) vs. 2F. Fluminense (Brazil): Monday, 3 p.m. in Charlotte, N.C. (DAZN)

1G. Manchester City (England) vs. 2H. Al Hilal (Saudi Arabia): Monday, 9 p.m. in Orlando (TBS, UniMás, DAZN)

1B. Paris Saint-Germain (France) vs. 2A. Inter Miami (United States): Sunday, noon in Atlanta (TNT, Univision 65)

1D. Flamengo (Brazil) vs. 2C. Bayern Munich (Germany): Sunday, 4 p.m. in Miami Gardens, Fla. (DAZN)

1F. Borussia Dortmund (Germany) vs. 2E. Monterrey (Mexico): Tuesday, 3 p.m. in Atlanta (UniMás, TUDN, DAZN)

1H. Real Madrid (Spain) vs. 2G. Juventus (Italy): Tuesday, 9 p.m. in Miami Gardens, Fla. (TNT, UniMás, DAZN)