Manchester City Crush Al Ain 6-0 to Secure Club World Cup Last 16 Spot
Manchester City secured their spot in the Club World Cup last 16 with a dominating 6-0 victory over Al Ain in Atlanta on Sunday.
In a match known as the 'Abu derby", City, owned by UAE vice-president Sheikh Mansour, faced off against Al Ain, led by Sheikh Mohamed, president of both the club and the country. The Premier League team showed no familial mercy.
Ilkay Gundogan opened the scoring for City, followed by young talent Claudio Echeverri's first goal for the club with a free-kick. Erling Haaland added the third with a penalty.
In the second half, Gundogan scored again, Oscar Bobb netted the fifth, and Rayan Cherki marked his first City goal, bringing them level with Juventus at the top of Group G with six points. This result also confirmed Juventus' advancement to the next round.
'Now we have to see whether we'll be first or second in the group," said City's coach Pep Guardiola. 'We played a little bit better than the first game, especially in the second half."
Guardiola had mentioned before the game that the squad needed trimming, which was evident as he rotated his entire starting line-up from the win over Wydad Casablanca.
This included superstar Haaland, newcomer Rayan Ait-Nouri, and promising talent Echeverri.
Al Ain, coached by Serbian Vladimir Ivic, were already defeated 5-0 by Juventus in their opener and faced another tough challenge against the 10-time Premier League champions.
City will face Juventus in Orlando on Thursday to determine who tops the group and potentially avoids a last-16 match against Spanish giants Real Madrid. City needed one more goal to move ahead of Juve on goal difference but ran out of time.
'Unfortunately, we started the second half a bit slow, so there was not much time at the end to score the last goal to be ahead of Juve going into the final group-stage game," Gundogan told DAZN.
'That's maybe the slightly disappointing part of the night, but the result speaks for itself and it was fully deserved."
(with AFP inputs)
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