Chelsea v Paris Saint-Germain: Club World Cup 2025 final - live

The lucrative denouement to Gianni Infantino’s elaborate vanity project or the latest step in the globalisation of football and the footballisation of the the global calendar? This Club World Cup final is a little bit of both, truth be told, but a preamble to a minute-by-minute report is not the place to get too soapboxy, even if this is the Guardian.

Let’s not think too macro here. We are here because we like football and we like interesting football matches, and this is certainly one of those. Newly-crowned European champions PSG, who battered Real Madrid 4-0 in the semi-finals of this tournament (and were even accused of taking it easy on the Spanish club), laid waste to a host of English clubs – Manchester City, Liverpool, Aston Villa and Arsenal – on their way to the Champions League title have a chance to add another notch to their bedpost in Chelsea, themselves an increasingly formidable force.

The Blues finished their Premier League season strongly to qualify for the Champions League, won the Europa Conference League final and have since bought and sold extremely well, adding João Pedro, Jamie Gittens, Liam Delap and Estêvão and Dário Essugo and somehow flogging Noni Madueke to Arsenal for £52m and Serbian goalkeeper Djordje Petrovic to Bournemouth for £25m. Having recently been viewed as a bit of a mess, they suddenly feel like contenders for the major honours again, including this one.

Heatwatch: it is expected to be 27°C at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, which sounds very hot to this writer, but is actually a lot cooler than Chelsea’s semi-final against Fluminense, when the temperature was 35°C. “I had to lie down on the ground because I was really dizzy,” said Chelsea’s Enzo Fernández after the match. Playing in this temperature is very dangerous.”

However much Infantino wants to champion this tournament – and he really does – there are serious questions to be answered over player welfare. Let’s hope that everyone on the pitch and in the stands enjoys today’s match.

And let’s hope we enjoy it, too! It should be a cracker and either cement an absolutely sensational season for the best male team in the world or show how far Chelsea have come under Enzo Maresca.

Kick-off is at 8pm BST, or 3pm local time.

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