Club World Cup Team Betting Predictions: Salzburg

If your name isn’t Real Madrid, Manchester City or Juventus, then the bottom quarter of the draw in this year’s Club World Cup simply wasn’t built for you. And that means difficulty could lie ahead of a Red Bull Salzburg side which is Uefa’s weakest entry.

My Salzburg Fifa Club World Cup 2025 predictions follow below, with a full run-down of their chances of winning the competition, and an assessment of their squad.

Group H: Real Madrid, Al Hilal, Pachuca, Salzburg

Fixtures: Pachuca vs Salzburg (23:00 BST, June 18), Salzburg vs Al Hilal (23:00 BST, June 22), Salzburg vs Real Madrid (02:00 BST, June 27)

Player to watch: Oscar Gloukh

It’s a valid question to ask how RB Salzburg managed to swing an invite to this particular jamboree since they are the lowest-ranked of the European teams on show.

With everyone else in the Uefa charts either present or ruled out by the two-clubs-per-country limit, Austria’s finest were given the nod thanks to their performances in continental competition over a four-year spell.

Indeed, they’ve already come up against Group H rivals Real Madrid this season, but that 5-1 reverse was one of seven defeats by two goals or more in eight league phase matches in the Champions League.

Looking to put that 34th-place finish behind them, Thomas Letsch’s side are not fancied to come out of this group either.

Madrid are the 1/6 favourites to win the group with Betfred, with Al Hilal at 8/1. RB come in next at 9/1, with 25/1 Pachuca rounding out the quartet.

Club World Cup 2025 Odds

Letsch was, of course, a mid-season addition after Manchester City's former Liverpool assistant manager Pep Ljinders was sacked just five months and 29 games into the head coaching role.

By that stage, die Roten Bullen were already 10 points off the pace in the Austrian Bundesliga.

Under Letsch they managed to recoup some of that gap, but were still eight points adrift when the league split before recovering to finish second in the Championship round behind champions Sturm Graz.

Now they head to the USA with zero expectation, and fans will hope that that can be a freeing sensation rather than a sign that their Champions League embarrassment is set to be replicated.

Player to watch: Oscar Gloukh

It’s fair to say that prolific striker Karim Konate had his season completely butchered in 2024/25.

The Ivorian suffered a knee injury one game in, and having returned in September he then lasted two months before a cruciate ligament tear ended his shortened term in November.

In his absence, Oscar Gloukh has been key to RB rallying after their poor start under Ljinders.

The 21-year-old attacker already has over 150 career appearances to his name including 19 caps for Israel, and was also a goalscorer at last summer’s Olympics in Paris.

He became the youngest player in his country’s history to score in the Champions League on his debut in the competition in September 2023. That strike against Benfica came when the former Maccabi Tel Aviv youngster was just 19 years and 172 days old.

And if he can deliver some more of the performances which saw him net 10 goals in 26 league games this season, then Salzburg have a chance at least of upsetting the applecart in Group H.

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Prediction: To be eliminated in the group stage

Many onlookers might be tempted to believe that every European side will progress to the round of 16, but RB Salzburg are a real rarity among the Uefa entrants in that they are not at all favoured to progress.

While I can see them giving Pachuca a tough time, it’s against Al Hilal in their second game that they might be found out, and they will obviously go into their final match against Real Madrid needing to have already done enough to progress.

This ought to be something more of a learning experience for RB though, and a chance to pick up a hefty amount of prize money simply for participating.

If you fancy them to get enough out of their first two games, they are 11/8 with Betfred for qualification from the group, but that would already be outstripping what everyone expects of them.

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