Now.... it gets REALLY interesting!

"You won't like me when I'm angry..."

Well, as I mused after the opening batch of games in this inaugural Club World Cup, the group phase didn't turn out to be nearly as straightforward as most people (including me) had expected before the tournament kicked off.

Porto were put out by Messi's Inter Miami, Atletico Madrid (who were really bad...) by relatively unfancied Brazilians Botafogo (who managed to nick a win off a very lacklustre PSG in their second game), Argentine giants River Plate by the far less illustrious Mexican team Monterrey, and RB Salzburg by the Saudi champs Al Hilal. While the first and last of those might have been anticipated as very possible outcomes (the bookies had actually made Al Hilal very slender favourites to qualify over Salzburg, and put Miami - perhaps a little over-generously - within 14 percentage points of Porto), the other two count as pretty major upsets; the bookmakers rated Botafogo a full 25 percentage points less likely to qualify than Atleti, and Moneterrey more than 60 points behind River Plate. Moreover, Chelsea finished second in their group behind the Brazilians Flamengo, and even mighty Bayern Munich slipped up, to finish behind Benfica; while Inter Milan and Borussia Dortmund, both far below their best so far, were also made to struggle a bit to come out on top of their groups. Only Manchester City and Real Madrid cruised through the opening phase relatively comfortably - but even Real were held to a draw by Al Hilal.

Though the weaker clubs took some time to adjust to the pace of the tournament - perhaps overawed by the company they suddenly found themselves in at first - they all showed a fair amount of both grit and flair, and got better as the tournament went on. Only Seattle and Urawa finished without any points, and every team managed to register at least one or two goals.

My pre-tournament sentimental 'outside bet' picks (not to win the thing, but perhaps to qualify for the knockouts, or at least get close to that) didn't quite come through for me. I honestly think Egyptian champs Al Ahly deserved to go further: they're probably better, really, than Miami, and maybe even than Palmeiras - but they were let down by unaccountably terrible finishing in their first two games. My South African darlings, Mamelodi Sundowns, had the opposite problem: if they could defend anywhere near as well as they attacked, they might have toppled Dortmund.

The upshot of some wayward performances by a few of the big names in this first phase (and some dubious weighting of the bracket in the first place...) is that we now have a very unbalanced draw for the knockout rounds: the right side of the draw gives us likely quarter-finals between PSG and Bayern (the two biggest favourites to win the title): and between Real Madrid (or Juventus) and Dortmund (or Monterrey) - possibly the three or four other strongest teams left in the competition, after Manchester City.

In knockout tournaments like this (I've played Fantasy versions of the Euros and the World Cup for some years now), although you get a fairly generous increase in the number of transfers through the later stages of the tournament, which should enable you to get by without needing your Wildcard (which is usually better spent trying to optimise your squad to take advantage of the most mis-matched fixtures in Round 2 of the group phase [and drawing on what you've gleaned about form and selections from the opening games]), you have to limit yourself to players that you're fairly confident will progress to the next round. And you have to be careful how you spread your selection across clubs, to try to make sure that you can't have too many players eliminated, even if you suffer a few results that go against your expectation.

And now there's extra pressure on this first knockout round selection from the fact that the game has announced its 'Mystery Chip' (god, I hate that concept....) is to be a 'Qualification Bonus', where you get 2 points extra for every player who gets through to the next round. (I'll probably have more to say about this new chip a little later....)

In theory, the 'Round of 16' ought to be the best time to play such a chip, because there are likely to be more fixtures where you can be really confident of the result - than in the subsequent rounds, where we expect to find only the best teams still in the competition.

However, things might not have worked out like that this time. Well, there's always a lot of anxiety about these selections in a knockout tournament, because there are few if any completely foregone conclusions. But in this Club World Cup 'Round of 16', I'd say only Manchester City and PSG really look locked-in to progress. The other six match-ups are all a bit too tight to call with any confdence. Juve are certainly good enough to unseat Real; and I think Flamengo have a decent chance of giving Bayern a fright, if they have a little bit of an off day.

So - it's a very tough call whether to use the 'Qualification Bonus' in this round (or one of the other bonus chips instead...). And it's very, very tough to pick who's likeliest to go through between..... Chelsea and Benfica, or Palmeiras and Botafogo, or Inter Milan and Fluminense.

GOOD LUCK, EVERYONE!!!