Overview
The situation in Group E of the FIFA Club World Cup 2025 is wide open. Urawa Red lost 1-3 to River Plate in the opening match, the team leading the rankings before the second round. However, Inter Milan's surprise draw 1-1 with Monterrey ensured that all four teams still had a chance.
Inter hope to win a match where they are rated much higher. Inter's draw with Monterrey was the first FIFA Club World Cup match (in any format) that an Italian team could not win. Milan and Inter have won all 4 previous matches in the old format.
One of Inter's victories was their only previous encounter with their Asian opponents. That was a 3-0 victory over South Korean side Seongnam FC at the 2010 FIFA Club World Cup. They won the championship in that year.
Inter have a total expected goals of 2.68 xG against Monterrey, the second highest after the opening match, behind Bayern Munich's 4.28 xG in a resounding 10-0 victory over Auckland City.
Inter Milan will be looking to Lautaro Martinez as the Argentine has scored nine goals in nine international games in 2025 (UEFA Champions League and FIFA Club World Cup), including the only goal against Monterrey.
Meanwhile, the Japanese team has lost both matches against European opponents in the old FIFA Club World Cup format without scoring any goals, against Milan in 2007 (0-1) and Manchester City in 2023 (0-3).
However, they scored in their opening match of this year's FIFA Club World Cup. Yusuke Matsuo successfully converted a penalty to become the first Japanese player to score at the FIFA Club World Cup, since Tsukasa Shiotani scored for Al Ain against Real Madrid in the 2018 final.
Predicting the result
Supercomputer Opta predicts Inter will win this match with an 85.5% chance. Meanwhile, Urawa Red has only a 4.8% chance of creating a surprise, while the remaining 9.7% is the scenario where the two teams will share points.
Despite sharing points in the first match, Inter are still expected to continue with 88.2%. For Urawa Red, their chance is only 4.5% to pass the group stage.
Score prediction: Inter Milan 2-0 Urawa Red
Expected lineup:
Inter Milan: Sommer, Pavard, De Vrij, Bastoni, Henrique, Barella, Asllani, Mkhitaryan, Augusto, Lautaro, Thuram.
Urawa Red: Nishikawa, Ishihara, Boza, Hoibraten, Naganuma, Yasui, Gustafson, Kaneko, Watanabe, Savio, Matsuo.
The match between Inter Milan and Urawa Reds takes place at 2:00 am on June 22 (Vietnam time).
