Brazil's Palmeiras faces uphill battle to win 1st FIFA Club World Cup crown

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Brazil's Palmeiras faces uphill battle to win 1st FIFA Club World Cup crown

2025-06-14 11:16 Last Updated At：11:31

SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil will have four teams, more than any other country, in the expanded Club World Cup kicking off this weekend in the United States. But for Palmeiras, the competition holds a special meaning: winning it would provide some redemption.

Under coach Abel Ferreira since 2020, Palmeiras lifted two Copa Libertadores titles, plus Brazilian league, cup, and state championships. Even before Ferreira, it boasted another South American crown and 11 league titles.

The only major trophy missing is a world champions’ title.

Other Brazilian clubs like Fluminense and Botafogo, also in the tournament, have never won it either. But the problem for Palmeiras and its 16 million fans stems from its three local rivals, Corinthians, Sao Paulo, and Santos, having all won it at least twice.

That has led to over two decades of memes, jokes, and insults. It could all come back for the third time in five years for Palmeiras.

“It’s true that we have a 10% chance of winning this tournament,” Ferreira said in early May. “So we’ll fight for these 10% starting with our first goal, getting through the group stage. We deserve to be there.”

Palmeiras qualified as 2021 Copa Libertadores winners. Its group stage rivals are Portugal’s Porto, Egypt’s Al Ahly, and Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami.

Fans like Matheus Flor sees a better chance of “ending the world title curse” later this year in the FIFA Intercontinental Cup, a shorter format with fewer teams, if Palmeiras wins its fourth Copa Libertadores title.

“The shortened version is more feasible; playing a European team just once in a final gives us more hope,” Flor said. “I’d spend money to go to Dubai, Tokyo, wherever, if I saw a chance of winning. This time, I think we’re not too excited because we know the joke will likely continue.”

Key Palmeiras players, like 18-year-old winger Estêvão, midfielder Raphael Veiga, and defender Gustavo Gómez, might not remain after the tournament.

Palmeiras has had three earlier shots at a world title. In 1999, they lost the Intercontinental Cup 1-0 to Manchester United. Twenty-two years later, they suffered a 1-0 semifinal defeat to Mexico’s Tigres in the Club World Cup, finishing fourth. A year later, more heartbreak came with a 2-1 extra time loss to Chelsea.

Many Palmeiras fans cling to the 1951 Copa Rio title as world champion status, though FIFA doesn’t officially equate it with the Intercontinental Cup and modern Club World Cup. That tournament saw Palmeiras beat Juventus 3-2 on aggregate.

Palmeiras finished the current Copa Libertadores group stage with the most points and is also contending for the league title.

Its first Club World Cup match is Sunday against Porto in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Most soccer fans in Sao Paulo will likely be watching.

Ever-hopeful Palmeiras fan Flor is pleased his team is once again the focus of rivals.

“Of course we want to end the joke forever, but no club’s greatness depends on lifting this title. We’re already great, the biggest winner in Brazil for a very long time,” Flor said. “One day we’ll get it, and they’ll all shut up."

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

What to know about the protests shaking Iran as government shuts down internet and phone networks

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Nationwide protests in Iran sparked by the Islamic Republic's ailing economy are putting new pressure on its theocracy as it has shut down the internet and telephone networks.

Tehran is still reeling from a 12-day war launched by Israel in June that saw the United States bomb nuclear sites in Iran. Economic pressure, which has intensified since September when the United Nations reimposed sanctions on the country over its atomic program, has sent Iran's rial currency into a free fall, now trading at over 1.4 million to $1.

Meanwhile, Iran's self-described “Axis of Resistance” — a coalition of countries and militant groups backed by Tehran — has been decimated since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023.

A threat by U.S. President Donald Trump warning Iran that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters” the U.S. “will come to their rescue," has taken on new meaning after American troops captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a longtime ally of Tehran.

“We're watching it very closely,” Trump said Sunday. “If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they're going to get hit very hard by the United States.”

Here's what to know about the protests and the challenges facing Iran's government.

More than 390 protests have taken place across all of Iran’s 31 provinces, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported Friday. The death toll had reached at least 42, it added, with more than 2,270 arrests. The group relies on an activist network inside of Iran for its reporting and has been accurate in past unrest.

Understanding the scale of the protests has been difficult. Iranian state media has provided little information about the demonstrations. Online videos offer only brief, shaky glimpses of people in the streets or the sound of gunfire. Journalists in general in Iran also face limits on reporting such as requiring permission to travel around the country, as well as the threat of harassment or arrest by authorities. The internet shutdown has further complicated the situation.

But the protests do not appear to be stopping, even after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday said “rioters must be put in their place.”

The collapse of the rial has led to a widening economic crisis in Iran. Prices are up on meat, rice and other staples of the Iranian dinner table. The nation has been struggling with an annual inflation rate of some 40%.

In December, Iran introduced a new pricing tier for its nationally subsidized gasoline, raising the price of some of the world’s cheapest gas and further pressuring the population. Tehran may seek steeper price increases in the future, as the government now will review prices every three months. Meanwhile, food prizes are expected to spike after Iran’s Central Bank in recent days ended a preferential, subsidized dollar-rial exchange rate for all products except medicine and wheat.

The protests began in late December with merchants in Tehran before spreading. While initially focused on economic issues, the demonstrations soon saw protesters chanting anti-government statements as well. Anger has been simmering over the years, particularly after the 2022 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody that triggered nationwide demonstrations.

Iran's “Axis of Resistance," which grew in prominence in the years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, is reeling.

Israel has crushed Hamas in the devastating war in the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group in Lebanon, has seen its top leadership killed by Israel and has been struggling since. A lightning offensive in December 2024 overthrew Iran’s longtime stalwart ally and client in Syria, President Bashar Assad, after years of war there. Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels also have been pounded by Israeli and U.S. airstrikes.

China meanwhile has remained a major buyer of Iranian crude oil, but hasn't provided overt military support. Neither has Russia, which has relied on Iranian drones in its war on Ukraine.

Iran has insisted for decades that its nuclear program is peaceful. However, its officials have increasingly threatened to pursue a nuclear weapon. Iran had been enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels prior to the U.S. attack in June, making it the only country in the world without a nuclear weapons program to do so.

Tehran also increasingly cut back its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, as tensions increased over its nuclear program in recent years. The IAEA's director-general has warned Iran could build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponize its program.

U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”

Iran recently said it was no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions. But there's been no significant talks in the months since the June war.

Iran decades ago was one of the United States’ top allies in the Mideast under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who purchased American military weapons and allowed CIA technicians to run secret listening posts monitoring the neighboring Soviet Union. The CIA fomented a 1953 coup that cemented the shah’s rule.

But in January 1979, the shah fled Iran as mass demonstrations swelled against his rule. Then came the Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which created Iran’s theocratic government.

Later that year, university students overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seeking the shah’s extradition and sparking the 444-day hostage crisis that saw diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S. severed.

During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the U.S. backed Saddam Hussein. During that conflict, the U.S. launched a one-day assault that crippled Iran at sea as part of the so-called “Tanker War,” and later shot down an Iranian commercial airliner that the U.S. military said it mistook for a warplane.

Iran and the U.S. have seesawed between enmity and grudging diplomacy in the years since. Relations peaked with the 2015 nuclear deal, which saw Iran greatly limit its program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. But Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, sparking tensions in the Mideast that intensified after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.