Slovenia may just have the ability to disrupt this group which includes two of the favourites to win the entire tournament in England and Germany. Slovenia topped their qualifying group, notably pipping France and Austria to top spot in Group H.

They won five of their eight games during qualifying, scoring 13 goals across these matches which suggests that they have enough firepower to trouble England here. Slovenia only failed to score in one of their qualifying matches for this competition.

England have looked a little open at the back in preparation for this tournament, conceding three against France and twice against Portugal in the friendlies in the lead up to the competition. England only conceded six goals during qualifying but are likely to be faced with a tougher challenge here against a Slovenia side that will take real confidence from their qualifying campaign.

Czechia can test Germany in their second game of the U21 European Championship, having finished 2nd in their qualifying group, scoring 13 goals across their eight matches (1.62 per game). 

Germany are clear favourites to win this game, but did show some defensive vulnerability during qualifying, which may help Czechia to unlock the German backline. Germany conceded 10 goals across their 10 qualifying matches, only managing to keep three clean sheets across these matches.

This is a pretty competitive group with England and Slovenia filling up the remaining spots - both of these sides topped their qualifying groups, so we can expect this group to go right down to the wire with every goal being important as the top spot and qualification to the knockout stages could be decided by goal difference.

A heavyweight clash in the group stages of the Club World Cup sees the newly crowned Champions of Europe take on an Atletico Madrid side that will hope that this tournament can offer an avenue to success after being pipped to the major honours in Spain, and even in Europe, by Barcelona and Real Madrid.

These sides faced off during the regular season in the league stage of the Champions League. Atletico Madrid managed to secure a 2-1 victory at the Parc des Princes, this was before Luis Enrique sparked his revolution at the French club but it still shows that Atletico can pull their weight against Europe’s elite.

Atletico Madrid have plenty of goal threats, most notably in their pairing of Julian Alvarez and Alexander Sorloth who netted 53 goals between them during the 24/25 season. Atletico Madrid should be slightly fresher for this tournament than PSG seeing as Luis Enrique’s side recently competed in and won the Champions League final.

Palmeiras will really fancy their chances of getting out of this group in which they’ve been drawn against Porto, Al Ahly and Inter Miami. Palmeiras come into this game having won seven of their 11 games in Serie A this season and they finished 2nd in the division behind Botafogo last campaign.

Porto have not enjoyed the best season, they lost long term head coach, Sergio Conceicao, to AC Milan during the campaign and have not really managed to recover since then, finishing 3rd in Liga Portugal behind Benfica and Sporting. They also finished 18th during the group stages of the Europa League, eventually being knocked out of the competition by Roma.

The player to keep an eye on here for Palmeiras is Estevao. The 18-year-old has joined Chelsea but will be competing with Palmeiras for the duration of this tournament. Estevao registered 25 goal contributions last season (15 goals, 10 assists) and has already racked up 16 goal contributions this campaign.