Cool Palmer helps red-hot Chelsea conquer the world

The boy from Wythenshawe who had sat on top of the Rockefeller on Friday took Chelsea to the top of the world last night.

- Sid Lowe

It was 90F down on the pitch in New Jersey, but, oh, this was cold all right. Two wonderful, almost identical strikes, executed with an effortless ease, and a lovely soft-shoed assist from Cole Palmer made Chelsea the first winners of the Club World Cup, history made here. Paris Saint-Germain had seemed peerless, a side that shifted the paradigm, but they could not find a way past Robert Sánchez at one end and were picked off, victims of a perfect plan, defeated inside half an hour. It had started so well, so unexpectedly, and it ended even better, history made.

"We know that they start the games very fast, very strong," Marc Cucurella had said, but while Ousmane Dembélé, forever on the prowl for prey, almost caught Sánchez 95 seconds in, it was Chelsea who did so. The first chance was theirs inside 10 minutes and it was so close that some of this stadium celebrated; the ball bending just past Gigi Donnarumma's right post and hitting the pole holding the net up. João Pedro had teed it up; Palmer was the man whose shot with the inside of his left foot fooled them. Not for long. That, it turned out, was just a sighter; next time, the MetLife could let go for real.