India, June 16— Although few people expected semi-professional Auckland City FC of New Zealand to compete with Bayern Munich in the first game of their FIFA Club World Cup campaign, the German powerhouse's 10-0 victory at Cincinnati's TQL Stadium was a worst-case scenario.

Business attended to by Bayern, who were up against an Auckland squad whose first team players only played semi-professionally and consequently were not at full strength, would be seen as such, no matter how much difference that would have made. Despite conceding six goals in the first half and four more in the second, resulting in a record scoreline at the tournament, the Kiwi team still found it to be a very useful defeat.

Al Hilal's 6-1 victory over Al Jazira in 2022 was the previous biggest margin of victory. In addition to maintaining a clean sheet against the defending champions of the New Zealand National League, Bayern surpassed that margin by twofold.

Kingsley Coman's sixth-minute header opened Bayern's massacre. The Frenchman scored two goals in the first half and was one of four players to score multiple times that day. Before the halftime break, Michael Olise netted twice, and Jamal Musiala entered the game in the 60th minute, scoring a hat-trick in the second half in just 17 minutes. Thomas Muller, who had scored in the first half, added to the Bavarians' lead in the 89th minute, bringing the score to 10-0. Munich's scoring list was completed by right-back Sacha Boey.

One minor triumph for Auckland City was keeping star forward Harry Kane relatively silent and scoring none of the ten goals. Auckland's trip to the United States will still be lengthy because they are missing all of their players and travelled without their head coach, Paul Posa, who was replaced by an interim coach for this tournament, which takes place during the Kiwi off-season.

Considering the vast disparity in financial power between the two teams—Auckland City's squad is worth less than 5 million euros, while Bayern's world-class players are worth over 900 million euros—the outcome was likely correct.

The positive aspect for Auckland is that they are entitled to £2.6 million in prize money due to being the only representatives of Oceania in this competition, which more than quadruples their income from last season's singlehanded effort. It remains to be seen if they can use that motivation to put on a meaningful performance against Argentina's Boca Juniors and Portugal's SL Benfica.

For questions regarding this article or any other content requests, please contact the Editor at contentservices@htdigital.in, HT Digital Streams Ltd.
Read Also: WTC Failure Sparks Questions: Is It Time to Drop Marnus Labuschagne?
Get the latest Bollywood entertainment news, trending celebrity news, latest celebrity news, new movie reviews, latest entertainment news, latest Bollywood news, and Bollywood celebrity fashion & style updates!