Chelsea advanced in the FIFA Club World Cup on June 28, getting three extra-time goals to defeat Benfica 4-1 in their Round of 16 encounter.
Following the victory, Chelsea’s manager wasn’t in a celebratory mood.
Enzo Maresca lambasted the nearly two-hour weather delay that interrupted the match at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, describing it as “a joke,” before launching into broader criticisms of the beleaguered event and FIFA’s decision to stage it in the United States.
With four minutes remaining in regulation, and Chelsea leading 1-0 courtesy of a Reece James free-kick goal in the 64th minute, the match was paused due to lightning in the area. It led to a 113-minute delay, with officials waiting for a storm to pass through the area. The match ended at 8:38 p.m. ET, more than four-and-a-half hours after it began.
After just one goal between the teams before the delay, Chelsea and Benfica combined for four goals the rest of the match. Benfica’s Ángel Di María converted a penalty kick in stoppage time to tie the game and send it into extra time. In the second 15-minute period of extra time, Chelsea scored three goals in nine minutes, with Christopher Nkunku’s 108th-minute goal serving as the game-winner.
“After the break, the game changed completely,” Maresca said after the match when asked about the difficulty of the lengthy delay and its effect on the game. “I think for me, personally, it’s not football. It’s already seven, eight, nine games that they suspended. It’s a joke, to be honest. It’s not football. It’s not for us.”
“You cannot be inside (for that long). I can understand that for security reasons, you are to suspend the game. But if you suspend seven, eight games, that means it is probably not the right place to do this competition.”
With the win, Chelsea will take on Brazilian club Palmeiras at the Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia on July 4 in the quarterfinals.
As Maresca noted, the Club World Cup has been beset by a slew of weather-related stoppages that have disrupted the flow of matches.
Chelsea’s win became the sixth Club World Cup game, and first of the event’s knockout stage, to be subjected to a weather delay. It was Benfica’s second experience with one, as its 6-0 win against Auckland City on June 20 in Orlando was held up by thunderstorms for two hours.
It’s one of several problems the Club World Cup has endured. Ticket sales and attendance have lagged throughout the event, with photos of half-full or largely empty venues circulating on social media. The official attendance for the Chelsea-Benfica game was 25,929 in a stadium with a seating capacity of nearly 75,000. The 48 group-stage games of the tournament had a combined one million empty seats.
Those woeful crowds and persistent thunderstorms have raised questions and concerns about next year’s World Cup, which will be held across 16 cities in North America, 11 of which are in the United States. Seven of the U.S.-based venues are outdoors and lack retractable roofs, leaving them vulnerable to the thunderstorms that are common across the country during the summer months.
“It’s a fantastic competition,” Maresca said. “It’s a Club World Cup. It’s top. We are happy to be in the last eight. We are happy to win all these kind of things. But something happens, six, seven games suspended, probably the one[s] that they decide, they need a reason, because it’s not normal to suspend a game. In a World Cup, how many games are suspended? Zero, probably. In Europe, how many games? Zero. We are here, two weeks, they’re already suspended six, seven games. There is some problem for me, personally.”