Club World Cup Fantasy 2025: Manchester City Best Picks, Predicted Line-up and Team Overview
Club World Fantasy 2025 is here! Continuing with our team previews, we take a look at the Manchester City best picks, predicted line-up and team overview.
Knowing how a team could line-up and their best assets could be absolutely key for success in Club World Cup Fantasy.
Team Overview
Manchester City qualified for the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup by winning the UEFA Champions League in the 2022–23 season. It was a historic achievement for the club, marking their first-ever Champions League triumph.
City defeated Inter Milan 1–0 in the final, held in Istanbul on June 10, 2023, with the only goal of the match coming from midfielder Rodri. The victory not only crowned them European champions but also secured their place in the newly expanded Club World Cup format.
Their 24/25 season was underwhelming, especially to their usual standards. Pep Guardiola and his men finished third in the Premier League and got knocked out by Real Madrid in the Champions League Round of 16.
Manchester City’ end of season form was mostly good – winning four, drawing one and losing one of their previous six matches. During those six matches they also scored eight goals, conceded two and kept an impressive four clean sheets.
Group and Fixtures
The English side come up against Wydad AC (MAR), Al Ain FC (UAE) and Juventus FC (ITA) in Group G.
Their schedule is as follows:
- Matchday 1 – Wydad AC
- Matchday 2 – Al-Ain
- Matchday 3 – Juventus
Manchester City head into their Matchday 1 and 2 clashes as heavy favourites to both win and win well. Anything other than a win would be seen as failure.
Juventus could be Manchester City’ biggest concern in the Group. However, they are still favourites to win. Don’t be surprised if the Italian side pick up a positive result though.
Predicted line-up
You can check out our Club World Cup Fantasy Ultimate Guide to help prepare you for the upcoming competition.
Additional Fan Notes
- Kovacic: Underwent surgery for an Achilles injury.
- Mcatee: Captaining U21s for the Euros.
- KDB: Almost done finalising a move elsewhere.
- Grealish: Set to not be selected in the squad
- I could see Rodri and Foden start ahead of Nico and Gundo/Bernardo/Doku respectively.
Top Picks
I’d say Josko Gvardiol (€6.1m) is the standout defender and is the most owned at 34% for a reason. The Croatian scored five goals in his latest Premier League campaign and ranked among the best defenders in the league for expected goals.
Goalkeeper Ederson (€5.6m), centre-back Ruben Dias (€5.8m) and Gvardiol are the most nailed city defenders and the latter has the best route to points. But, I’d like to emphasise that no City defender is nailed with Pep roulette.
Akanji could be a shout for the under 5% selected differential points if you’d like the punt, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see Khusanov/Nico play ahead of him.
Penalty taker Erling Haaland (€11m) is the obvious option and best forward for a reason, yet he is somehow less selected than Omar Marmoush (€8m). Haaland had a mixed season overall, but he still racked up 22 goals and three assists in his 31 Premier League matches.
Teammate Marmoush had a solid first season in a Manchester City shirt – hitting seven goals in 16 league appearances.
The midfielders are all already under 5% selected and rightfully so, that’s where the most rotation is likely to be. For those that want to take a risk then I’d go for Doku/Gundo, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
There we have it, our Manchester City Best Picks, Predicted Line-up and Team Overview. Will you be picking any of their players?
