Revealed: The bonding techniques fuelling Manchester City's bid for Club World Cup glory

Two-touch beach football with Pep Guardiola, basketball, golf and post-dinner conversations – Manuel Akanji has revealed the bonding techniques fuelling Manchester City’s bid for FIFA Club World Cup glory.

The 2024/25 season went down as the first campaign since Guardiola’s first year at City in 2016/17 that they had failed to win a single major trophy, having lost in a second successive FA Cup Final at the hands of Crystal Palace along the way.

But after impressive wins over Wydad and Al Ain at the Club World Cup – where you can watch every game live and free on DAZN – City have already reached the knockout stages.

Their final group-stage game with Serie A giants Juventus on Thursday will determine the winner of Group G and City defender Akanji has told how the squad has bonded in the US.

“It’s definitely a good environment and obviously with every win, it gets better,” the Switzerland international told DAZN when asked to sum up City’s collective desire.

“We’ve got two wins out of two and also two quite comfortable wins – now we’ve got the last game for first place in the group which is going to be really important.

“The manager helps us a lot to take our focus on and take our focus off as well in between the games. And then when it's time to focus, we focus again.”

Downtime in America has included playing two-touch on the beach with a shirtless Guardiola and socialising with team-mates.

“I feel really comfortable around the team,” added Akanji.

“Even after meals or when we have afternoons off, we do a lot of things together.

“Obviously not the whole group, but like groups of five or six players.

“After dinner we stay there for one hour and talk or play games with each other.

“We even played a bit of basketball and some players go golfing.

“I think it's really important that they have a good atmosphere around here because we try to stay here [at the Club World Cup] until the end and this is what’s needed.”

Akanji is now waiting to discover if he will be picked to face Juventus, having played in the demolition of Al Ain after being left out for the group opener against Wydad.

He said: “It has always been a big competition in this team because we have so many good players.

“I didn't play in the first one, I played in the second one, so now we're going to see what happens in the third game. For me personally, I want to play every game.”

Watch every game of the 2025 Club World Cup live and free on DAZN. More information and to sign up to a free account here