Kevin De Bruyne risk is not worth taking despite Man City’s obvious Club World Cup temptation

The talking points as Manchester City prepare to take on Urawa Red Diamonds in the semi-final of the FIFA Club World Cup in Jeddah.

Pep Guardiola says it is an honour for Manchester City to be in Saudi Arabia competing for the Club World Cup for the very first time.

Guardiola can set an individual record in the competition if he guides City to another title, but must take his bruised and battered side through the disappointment of drawing late on against Crystal Palace and into a two-game campaign to be crowned world champions.

The injury issues that have plagued City over the last fortnight remain, despite Kevin De Bruyne’s return to training in Jeddah, so it is up to Guardiola whether to make changes or stick with a similar side that threw away two points against Palace. The Blues take on Urawa Red Diamonds in Tuesday’s Club World Cup semi-final, and we’ve picked out five key talking points below:

City’s season-long ambition
From the start of the season, Manchester City players and staff earmarked the Club World Cup as one of their top priorities in terms of trophies they wanted to win. The Premier League and Champions League remain more important and more prestigious, but if City want to cement their status as the best team in the world, a trophy confirming just that will do wonders for the club.

Ruben Dias and Kyle Walker were among the players outlining their intentions to win the Club World Cup – a new trophy on offer – while Jack Grealish was more keen to win the Community Shield at the start of the season because he’d never won it before. That suggests he will be equally desperate to become a world champion of sorts.

Guardiola may have complaints over the schedule that the Club World Cup provides, while also being wary of their recent form and need to improve in the Premier League. However, he too earmarked the Club World Cup as one of City’s season priorities at the start of the campaign. He has managed two of the world’s best-ever club sides in his career, but only one of them can legitimately call themselves world champions. Now, he has a chance to take this City side to unscaled heights and he will be sure not to waste that chance.

Kovacic has big role to play
A possible reason why it took so long for City to win the Champions League was the lack of players with experience of winning it. Only Scott Carson, a substitute goalkeeper in 2005, could help his teammates through the difficult moments, so City had to learn how to win it on their own. The same is true of their Club World Cup squad, on the whole, but now the majority are treble-winners, and one new signing is a four-time winner of the Club World Cup.

Mateo Kovacic has won this title three times with Real Madrid and once with Chelsea, and while a number of Real players have between five and seven titles, no player has won the competition with three separate clubs. Kovacic can use his experience to give City a new title and write himself into history before the competition changes for good. It would be a record that may never be broken.

Guardiola has won it three times – twice with Barcelona and once with Bayern Munich – and can become the first manager to win the competition four times, and the first with three clubs. If City can get past Urawa Red Diamonds and win the final, history awaits Kovacic and Guardiola as well as the club in general.

De Bruyne risk not worth taking
De Bruyne was a welcome face back in training, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he is fit enough to play on Tuesday. Erling Haaland and Jeremy Doku were absent, suggesting that they won’t feature again as their injuries are managed. City have taken six youngsters on top of their official 23-man squad to Saudi Arabia and can replace any injured player for the semi-final if needed.

Even if De Bruyne was fit, or if Haaland or Doku are available later in the week, it makes little sense to rush them back when more important games are coming in the Premier League and Champions League. It may be nice for those players to play a part in winning another medal for City, but not at the expense of their long-term fitness. The Blues have enough to manage without those players, however important they are.

In De Bruyne’s case, he already has history of rushing back from injury, or playing through the pain barrier, to cut short two major finals – limping out of the 2021 and 2023 Champions League finals. Even if he misses the Club World Cup to continue a wretched run of luck when it comes to these finals, he is giving himself a better chance of being fit and firing for a potential third Champions League final in 2024.

The unknown
City will be favourites for their semi-final with Urawa Red Diamonds, but as Guardiola admits, they know very little about their opponents. All he could offer was the fact that the Japanese national team is performing well in recent years, so the best team from Japan must be producing good players. When City have played sister club Yokohama F. Marinos in pre-season on two occasions recently, their not-quite-fit players have been given competitive games from the J League side. Urawa, however, are obviously not Yokohama.

With temperatures topping 30 degrees in Jeddah as opposed to the single-figure temperatures back in Manchester, there will be a period of adaptation for the Urawa game. Guardiola made it clear his side were at a disadvantage by having played in the Premier League on Saturday and travelling overnight to Saudi Arabia, while Urawa have been in the country for longer and have already won one game to set up this semi-final.

Some players may not be fit enough to play Saturday-Tuesday-Friday, so Guardiola’s team sheet should reflect that against Urawa, as well as the tiring preparations in the last few days. If the final should represent City’s strongest side from the players available, then the semi-final should be used to give rests to anyone who needs one – while also remembering that Urawa are something of an unknown quantity.