The Seattle Sounders open the FIFA Club World Cup against Al Ahly of Egypt on Saturday in Tangier, Morocco.
Al Ahly defeated New Zealand’s Auckland City 3-0 in Wednesday’s first round.
The second-round matchup Saturday will be at 9:30 a.m. PT on Fox Sports 2 from Ibn Batouta Stadium, the same site of Al Ahly’s win.
Al Ahly, who are based in Cairo, are 42-time Egyptian Premier League winners. They’ve also won 10 CAF (Africa) Champions League titles and are three-time FIFA Club World Cup third-place finishers (as recently as 2020 and 2021).
The Sounders, Major League Soccer’s first participant in the competition, arrive as CONCACAF representatives via their CCL win last season. Al Ahly now stand in their way of a Feb. 8 semifinal showdown against Spanish giant Real Madrid.
A victory against the 14-time European champions and four-time Club World Cup winners would book them a spot in the Feb. 11 final. Reaching the semifinal would guarantee Seattle a third game at the tournament, which holds a third-place match on the same day as the final.
Brian Schmetzer’s side hasn’t played an official match since Oct. 9. The Sounders got some game action over the weekend in Spain with a pair of friendlies against Wolfsberger AC of Austria and Hammarby IF of Sweden.
golf
• Washington men’s golfers Teddy Lin and Taehoon Song tied for seventh place at the 2023 Southwestern Invitational in Westlake Village, California.
UW tied for fifth as a team.
basketball
• Abilene Christian downed the Seattle University men’s basketball team 83-68 at Climate Pledge Arena. Alex Schumacher led SU with 16 points.