How Chelsea made the Club World Cup knockouts with Liam Delap scoring first goal against Esperance – The New York Times

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Chelsea secured progression to the last 16 at the 2025 Club World Cup with a 3-0 win against Esperance.
Tosin Adarabioyo and Liam Delap scored in first-half stoppage time to give the Premier League side a commanding lead after a less than impressive start. They then controlled the second half before Tyrique George added a third, seconds before full time.
Chelsea finished as Group D runners-up and will now face Group C winners Benfica in the Round of 16, in Charlotte on Saturday.
Flamengo had already won Group D and closed out with a 1-1 draw against LAFC, to set up their tie with Bayern Munich on Sunday.
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Esperance 0 Chelsea 3 – Liam Delap’s first goal for the club and what to expect from Benfica
This is another interesting subplot to Saturday’s Round of 16 clash between Chelsea and Benfica.
Our reporter Mario Cortegana grabbed this from Benfica president Rui Costa to Marca, on Alvaro Carreras’ potential move to Real Madrid:
💬 “Let them (Real Madrid) make us a proposal. None has arrived so far. If they do we will see what happens.
“Now is not the time and it will not be until the end of the tournament and our participation. Until then, we won’t have to talk about anything. Carreras is here with us.”
So in short, expect Carreras to feature on Saturday — unless things change.
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Another familiar European side can advance with a positive result in their group stage finale tomorrow, as Borussia Dortmund take on the already eliminated South Koreans, Ulsan HD (3pm ET).
We’ll have live coverage of that game, while also keeping you updated on the other Group F finale between Fluminese and Mamelodi Sundowns, right here at The Athletic.
Then later tomorrow, Group E also wraps up as Inter and River Plate face off at Lumen Field in Seattle, while Monterrey tackle Urawa Red Diamonds at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.
Inter, River Plate and Monterrey all have a shot at the top two in one of the closer groups at this Club World Cup.
That extended delay in the second half was not a great advert for FIFA’s supposedly faster VAR system.
Supporters in the stadium were given no indication that a penalty check was imminent, nor what referee Yael Falcon Perez was called to the pitchside monitor to review.
Only once he communicated his decision (through very echoey PA speakers) did it emerge that the penalty Christopher Nkunku had spent several minutes preparing to take, was being wiped away as a result of a mistaken handball decision.
Chelsea may have been able to find their groove against Esperance, but Group C winners Benfica in the round of 16 will pose a much tougher test.
Benfica beat Bundesliga winners Bayern Munich to the top spot by one point, edging Vincent Kompany’s squad 1-0 in their group stage finale on Tuesday, although Bayern had already qualified.
Bruno Lage’s came back strongly from 2-0 down to draw 2-2 with Boca Juniors in their opening match before thumping Auckland City 6-0.
Angel Di Maria, now 37, has contributed three goals in the group stage and will be one threat Chelsea will have to silence, while Greece striker Vangelis Pavlidis, who scored in the win over England in October, brings a physical presence to the attack and has 30 goals to his name this season across all competitions.
Lage’s centre-back pairing of veteran Nicolas Otamendi and rising talent Antonio Silva has also done well in each of the last two matches.
Expect both sides to be up for the challenge with $13.1 million in prize money and a quarter-final berth going to the winner.
Chelsea’s head coach never fully explained why he decided to use a crunch Group D clash against Flamengo to try “something completely different” tactically with an eye on next season. His logic for making eight changes to that team against Esperance was at least easier to understand.
“We have played every three days and with these conditions (the heat), we wanted to give time for rest and recovery,” he said before the game. “The ones that are out are also very tired.”
Not that it lessened the risk to his credibility. Maresca placed his trust, and the responsibility of avoiding the unlikely defeat that would have sent Chelsea home before the knockout rounds, largely in his reserves. On the stroke of half-time in a sweltering Lincoln Financial Field, they delivered the attacking burst that validated his faith.
Some might have interpreted Marsca's selection as disrespect but as he so often did in last season’s UEFA Conference League campaign, Maresca correctly calibrated the level of threat Esperance would pose, and his reward is that many of his key players have gained valuable recovery time ahead of a round of 16 date with Benfica in Charlotte on Saturday.
His instinct for prioritising the bigger picture led him astray against Flamengo but it served him well here, and a more rested Chelsea advance into a knockout bracket that has unexpectedly presented them with a realistic path into the semi-finals.
Enzo Maresca was pretty calm after a routine, comfortable win in the end and with Chelsea’s progress secured.
No doubt the load management will continue from here. Here is the Chelsea boss to DAZN:
💬 “We’re very happy. After a defeat, we wanted a win to continue to have a winner mentality. The players were good and now we can think to the next one.
“It’s a good feeling for (Liam Delap) and for his team-mates (that he has scored) and we are happy to have him with us.
“We now have two, three days to prepare for the next game and with this condition, we will try to do our best.”
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Something else this is clear with Liam Delap — he really isn’t worried about the weight of wearing Chelsea’s No 9 shirt this season:
💬 “You’ve got to have belief and confidence as a player. It’s just a number on the shirt at the end of the day and it doesn’t really mean that much to me. I don’t believe in all that stuff. So hopefully, I can just keep delivering.”
For much of a tepid first half, Liam Delap was Chelsea’s likeliest route to a breakthrough — his bustling runs flirting with the goal that the gods of narrative had ordained, after Nicolas Jackson removed himself from the equation for this and the next Club World Cup match with an incomprehensible red card tackle in the Flamengo game.
When it arrived with the final act of the first half, it showcased everything that Delap is capable of adding to this Chelsea team: strength, solo skill and composure when it counts.
His take on the half-turn was impressive enough, a deft touch on his right thigh while rotating his body to shield the ball from one Esperance defender. The second and third touches, arriving in quick succession, removed another defender from his path and reduced Ben Said to a spectator before anyone else on the pitch or in the stands realised what was happening.
Delap’s decisiveness is what Chelsea have been hoping to consistently draw out of Jackson, and what Maresca’s attack badly needs to avoid becoming bogged down. The resistance he encountered may have been far from elite, but the control and calm he displayed to exploit it most certainly were.
Liam Delap showed today what he can offer Chelsea following his move from Ipswich Town — and he’s looking forward to more service from Enzo Fernandez in future.
Here is Delap, speaking to DAZN:
💬 “He (Fernandez) is an incredible player. We’ve spoken as much as we can and he’s told me to run when he gets the ball and I did. He showed today his quality of passing, he got two assists and I’m just lucky he passed it to me.
“It’s a great feeling.
We needed to win today and to get a goal, it’s a special feeling and even more more importantly, we’re through to the next stage.”
So, Lionel Messi won’t be the only Argentina star about to face his former club for the first time — Inter Miami also have a meeting with Paris Saint-Germain in the Round of 16.
To build on what Michael says, Enzo Fernandez was sold to Chelsea by Benfica for £106.8 million in 2023, after he spent just six months in Portugal.
He had won Best Young Player at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar too, as well as the main prize.
Saturday will also be the first Chelsea matchup against Benfica since the 2013 Europa League final, which was a 2-1 win for the Blues. The two faced off in the 2012 Champions League quarter-finals as well, which was also won 2-1 by Chelsea on aggregate en route to the club’s first UCL win that year.
Enzo Fernandez was the real star of the show tonight, and he will almost certainly be the talk of the Round of 16 clash too.
The Chelsea captain will be coming up against the team who sold him to Chelsea in January 2023, just weeks after his World Cup success with Argentina in Qatar.
It should be a fun reunion.
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Here is how Group D finished then, which is basically as it started the day.
Flamengo will now face Group C runners-up Bayern Munich in the last 16 — so maybe in this instance, Chelsea won’t mind that it was second and a clash with Benfica.
And to be neat and tidy, it finished 1-1 between Flamengo and LAFC.
So everyone’s happy, right?!
A night off for Marc Cucurella, Levi Colwill, Trevoh Chalobah, Reece James, Cole Palmer, Moises Caicedo and Pedro Neto?
Handy for Chelsea that.
And they now have until Saturday afternoon in the U.S. to prepare to face Benfica in the Round of 16, in Charlotte.
Esperance’s defeat to Chelsea tonight moves them to three wins, six defeats all-time in FIFA Club World Cup matches.
Since failing to win any matches at the 2011 edition, they have at least won one match in each of their last three tournament involvements.
Which is progress.
FT: Esperance 0-3 Chelsea
And with that, the final whistle finally sounds.
It took a couple of minutes at the end of the first half to secure victory. The rest was a cruise for Chelsea.
All in all, that went perfectly for Enzo Maresca. Meanwhile, the Club World Cup was better for having Esperance and their supporters here, I reckon.
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90+7' Esperance 0-3 Chelsea
Chelsea do get their third goal! They break forward, Tyrique George pulls the trigger from a central area and it somehow squirms under Ben Said’s arms.
Poor goalkeeping again, so much so that George can’t even bring himself to celebrate the goal.
“We want seven minutes of additional time”, said absolutely no one inside Lincoln Financial Field.
90+4' Esperance 0-2 Chelsea
A quick reminder that Flamengo have already won Group D with their previous two wins over Chelsea and Esperance, while LAFC were already eliminated.
The only issue to be resolved before these two games kicked off, was who out of these two teams would finish second in the group.
And that will be Chelsea. They’re still looking for a third goal too, albeit leisurely.

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