TOKYO — The dormant football rivalry between neighbors Australia and New Zealand will be revived in the opener of the Club World Cup on Thursday, as Adelaide United take on Waitakere United.

The opening fixture is expected to be a brief moment in the limelight for the two sides in a competition where European champion Manchester United and South American champion Liga de Quito are heavily favored to meet in the final at Yokohama International Stadium.

"There is the old Australia-New Zealand rivalry there, of course," said Waitakere coach Chris Milicich. "We'll play against a side whose playing style we pretty much understand."

Once regular opponents in international competition, Australia and New Zealand's football rivalry has waned since Australia left the Oceania confederation after the 2006 World Cup, joining Asia.

Adelaide qualified for the Club World Cup as runners up, to Japan's Gamba Osaka, in the Asian Champions League final.

Should Adelaide beat Waitakere, it will have an immediate opportunity to avenge that defeat as it would face Gamba in the quarterfinals. The winner of that match will face Manchester United in the last four.

The Australians arrive in Japan buoyed by a 6-1 win over Wellington in the Australian A-League on Friday.

Semiprofessional Waitakere qualified for its second straight Club World Cup appearance by retaining its Oceania title, beating Kossa of the Solomon Islands 6-3 on aggregate in April and May.

Adelaide has never faced Waitakere before but coach Aurelio Vidmar said the New Zealanders' tournament experience "is a big plus to them."

Waitakere lost 3-1 to Iran's Sepahan in last year's tournament.

"Everybody at the club knows we will face a very hard game," Waitakere's Brazilian midfielder Adriano Pimenta said. "But we have to be positive. In football you can get one chance, one goal, and then you can achieve a result."

The tournament, which features the club champions from football's six continental confederations, is being played in Japan for the fourth straight year. It has been expanded from its predecessor, the Intercontinental Cup which was a one-off match between the champions of Europe and South America.

Manchester United is expected to add to its impressive achievements this year — notably the European Champions League and English Premier League titles —with another trophy.

It is United's second appearance in the expanded Club World Cup, having controversially sat out the English F.A. Cup in 2000 to participate. Manager Sir Alex Ferguson is expected to bring a full-strength squad to Japan, headlined by newly crowned European Player of the Year Cristiano Ronaldo.

He will be complemented by a strikeforce of Wayne Rooney, Carlos Tevez and Dimitar Berbatov for the Red Devils, who qualified by winning the Champions League in May, beating fellow English club Chelsea in a penalty shootout in Moscow.

Liga de Quito produced a much more unlikely result by winning South America's Copa Libertadores, beating Brazil's Fluminense in a penalty shootout after a two-legged final and becoming the first club from Ecuador to hoist the continent's biggest title.

The squad has undergone several changes since that July victory, but star quintet Jose Cevallos, Patricio Urrutia, Luis Bolanos, Claudio Bieler and Agustin Delgado are all scheduled to make the trip.

Mexico's Pachuca was the first club to qualify for the tournament when it defeated Deportivo Saprissa of Costa Rica for the CONCACAF title in April.

Its quarterfinal opponent will be Egypt's Al Ahly, which represents Africa for the third time in four years. The winner will meet Liga de Quito in the semifinals.