How Palmeiras, Fluminense helped Chelsea find their groove at CWC

A look at how Palmeiras and Fluminense have helped Chelsea find their best version during the 2025 Club World Cup.

Chelsea reached the Club World Cup final like a chameleon. Although Enzo Maresca’s playing style didn’t change significantly from last season’s, there was considerable variation due to the various players used throughout the competition.

Throughout the World Cup, the Blues faced three Brazilian teams: Flamengo, Palmeiras, and Fluminense – and against all three, they demonstrated different ways of building up and entering the final third, depending on who Maresca fielded. And the Brazilians “helped” Chelsea find their feet.

Pedro’s arrival changed Chelsea at a key periodThe Brazilian was signed during the Club World Cup and made an impact from the first game, in the quarter-finals against Palmeiras. Cole Palmer, in a post-match interview, even said that Joao Pedro changed the game when he came on 10 minutes into the second half.

Replacing Liam Delap, another recent signing who arrived to fight for the centre-forward spot, the former Brighton player was a crucial centre-forward in movements without the ball.

It was only two games and a few minutes, but it was possible to get an idea of what could be one of Maresca’s main ideas with the Brazilian: to be the target of long passes to escape pressure, to keep the ball from progressing from higher areas, in addition to pushing the defense line during the opponent’s pressure – precisely because he is the target of long balls.

And the Brazilian’s arrival doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll take Delap or Nicolas Jackson’s spot. In a formation where Cucurella advances and occupies the left flank, as was the case during the World Cup, Joao could be the left winger who takes up more central positions as a midfielder.

This is if Maresca still wants to stick with the 3-2-5 formation he played mostly throughout last season. This way, he could have Joao Pedro, Delap (or Jackson), Palmer, and Pedro Neto on the field together, for example.

Maresca has used his squad impressively at Club World CupIf at times during Todd Boehly’s project there was criticism about the size of the Blues’ squad – and its many players competing for the same positions – Maresca managed to use this to his advantage by creating several variations.

The main people responsible for this are the full-backs, each offering possibilities and being used in different roles:

Malo Gusto, on the right, is an option to advance along the side and occupy the corridor, most of the time.
Reece James, despite gaining prominence in his career doing the same as Gusto, became an inverted full-back, usually playing as a defensive midfielder.
Marc Cucurella, on the left, alternates as a defensive midfielder or midfielder, depending on who is in the middle, on the wing and who is the defensive midfielder, and even as a defender in the back three.
Cucurella was the one who varied the most: with the ball, he was a defender against Fluminense and Palmeiras, a midfielder and defensive midfielder against LAFC and played further forward, on the wing, against Benfica.
The full-back variations are directly linked to the wingers. With the departure of Noni Madueke and the arrivals of Joao Pedro and Jamie Gittens, there will be other possibilities. But against Fluminense, for example, the changes were evident:

Pedro Neto started as a left winger, and Christopher Nkunku on the right. The former occupied the wing, while the latter dropped into the middle, giving the wing to Gusto.
After taking a 2-0 lead against Tricolor, Neto switched to right winger and occupied the wing, playing Gusto into the half-space, as a midfielder – a position previously occupied by Nkunku, who moved to the left.
Against Fluminense, Cucurella participated in the three-man attack, but which only had Moises Caicedo as a defensive midfielder (3-1), different from the Blues’ usual, who usually have a full-back alongside the defensive midfielder to form the 3-2 attack.

In this scenario, Enzo Fernandez, the second midfielder, Cole Palmer, the number 10, and Nkunku (later Gusto) were the midfielders who occupied the positions between the lines and the half-spaces to open the line of five defenders of Renato Gaúcho’s team.

It was against Palmeiras that Maresca deployed his Chelsea side in a 3-1-5-1 formation for the first time effectively in the World Cup, and he repeated it successfully against Fluminense. Against Flamengo, for example, he played with Gusto and James in a hybrid 4-4-2 with Palmer and Enzo as midfielders.

This article was originally published on Trivela.

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