Lionel Messi and Inter Miami should be making the knockouts! Winners and losers of the 2025 Club World Cup draw as Chelsea and Real Madrid earn favourable groups - but PSG face potential global embarrassment

Let's face it: Real Madrid need a break after a rotten few weeks for Kylian Mbappe & Co. - and they got one in Thursday's draw.

Al-Hilal and Pachuca are two fine sides, with the former having won the Saudi Pro League without losing a game last season while the latter are continental champions of North America, and both will be counting down the days until they get to have a crack at Los Blancos.

However, Red Bull Salzburg were the Pot Two team that everybody in the tournament wanted to draw - and Madrid got them, making their path to the knockout stage significantly easier.

Luis Enrique has enough problems to worry about without concerning himself with a competition that takes place next summer. The Spaniard's primary focus right now, in fact, will be just ensuring that he's still in the Paris Saint-Germain hotseat by the time the Club World Cup rolls around.

It's clear, though, that the perennial French champions are taking the competition very seriously. President Nasser Al-Khelaifi was even in attendance for the draw - and it's fair to say he won't be too happy with how it went.

Drawing Atletico Madrid was bad enough for PSG, who were beaten at home by the Rojiblancos in the Champions League just a few weeks ago, but getting Botafogo as their Pot Three team was an absolute disaster. The Brazilians have just been crowned Copa Libertadores champions for the first time in their history and are perfectly poised to win the domestic title this weekend, too.

On current form, then, it's not too hard to envisage a PSG team that might not even make it through to the play-off round of the Champions League going on to suffer a humiliating group-stage exit at the inaugural Club World Cup.

Inter Miami are obviously lucky just to be involved in the Club World Cup, given they infamously failed to win this year's MLS Cup after tearing it up during the regular season, so it's crazy that they've now got a serious shot at making the last 16 - which many thought impossible before Thursday's draw.

However, due to the many constraints involved in the process, Miami managed to avoid all of the strongest sides and ended up in Group A alongside Palmeiras, Porto and Al Ahly.

Consequently, Messi's got an unexpected opportunity to make a real mark on what could be the last significant club tournament he plays in before calling time on his illustrious career.

Obviously part of the appeal of the Club World Cup for the likes of Auckland City is getting to play against some of the biggest clubs and most famous players in football. In that sense, the New Zealanders will be delighted after being bracketed with Bayern Munich, Benfica and Boca Juniors.

At the same time, though, it's also not hard to fear for Auckland. After all we're talking about a team that was recently hammered 6-2 by Al Ain in the FIFA Intercontinental Cup. They could genuinely suffer some even worse beatings in the United States.

After a couple of years of almost constant chaos, Chelsea suddenly have a settled side. Much of the credit must go to Enzo Maresca, who has done a fine job since the surprise sacking of Mauricio Pochettino at the end of last season, and there's already mounting talk that the Italian's team might actually challenge for this season's Premier League title.

Whether they do or not remains to be seen, but what's clear is that Chelsea are moving in the right direction again, which means they should be a serious challenger at the Club World Cup.

They should certainly have little difficulty beating Flamengo, Club Leon and Esperance Sportive de Tunisie to top spot in Group D and, on their current rate of trajectory, nobody will want to have to face a side containing Cole Palmer, Nicolas Jackson and Moises Caicedo in the knockout stage. Indeed, Chelsea are a good team now; they could be a whole lot better by next summer.

Thursday's draw took an awful long time to get through - but was it worth the wait? Plenty of supporters seemed frustrated by how long it took to complete, while many others were confused by the presence of Salzburg - who are currently fifth in the Austrian Bundesliga - despite FIFA's best efforts to explain the qualification process over the past year or so.

There are, of course, a number of fascinating fixtures, including Bayern versus Boca and Inter against River Plate, while the football hipsters will be rightly excited by the prospect of seeing the likes of Al-Hilal, Pachuca and Al Ahly on such a grand stage.

The problem, though, was that the draw didn't really produce a 'Group of Death' (PSG, Atletico Madrid, Botafogo and Seattle Sounders was the closest we got), while those hoping to see Messi line out against one of the top teams in Europe were also left disappointed - for now at least.