FIFA’s Club World Cup kicked off on 15 June with Bayern Munich trouncing Auckland City 10-0. The “new era” of global club football began with a demolition job that exposed the biggest of the tournament’s many problems: it’s a spectacle built for commerce, not competition. So, as football fans who crave a contest, why should we care?
The brainchild of FIFA President Gianni Infantino, the new competition is designed to echo a tournament format we all know and love: once every four years, 32 teams meet in eight groups of four, with the top two from every group advancing to the knockout stages. These are whittled down until one team gets to call themselves champions of the world. I feel like we’ve seen this before. Ah yes, like the actual World Cup that people actually care about. Very clever, FIFA.
In spite of FIFA’s best but often bumbling efforts, onlookers are still trying to figure this competition out, even after the first ball’s been kicked. It seems fans, and maybe players, are still to be convinced of whether they should care. Given some of the concerns about the tournament, the apparent apathy with which it’s been met on this side of the Atlantic may be the best reception FIFA could hope for.
Questionable motives?
Despite what Infantino might say about the need for a global club competition to give opportunities and develop talent all over the world, the true motivation for this new edition of the Club World Cup appears far less altruistic. While General Secretary of Europe’s football federation UEFA, Infantino saw the economic potential of club football, which occupies the vast majority of the footballing calendar, with the success of the Champions League. Since moving to FIFA and becoming football’s most powerful man, Infantino has been desperate to muscle in on UEFA’s dominance in the club game and take a slice of the pie.
On the face of it, a global club competition is a good idea. For too long, the immense wealth being pumped into football has been concentrated in Western Europe. Giving clubs from Africa or East Asia the ability to promote their club and league’s image to a worldwide audience through sharing the spotlight with Real Madrid or Chelsea is certainly a step in the right direction and adheres to FIFA’s mission statement of developing and promoting football everywhere.
While the Club World Cup could have such a positive effect, Infantino also knows that clubs seeing economic benefits they could have scarcely imagined before this competition will feel indebted to him, entrenching his global powerbase and giving him more scope for political dominance of the footballing world.
Skewing domestic leagues
The sums of money at stake in the Club World Cup, which are transformative for some clubs, may come with a less desirable transformational side-effect. As we’ve seen in the Champions League, clubs that routinely rub shoulders with elite teams can quickly outgrow their domestic competitors as their pockets swell.
These repercussions could be even more pronounced with the Club World Cup. The prize of £2.6mn would be sniffed at by members of the European elite. For part-time New Zealand outfit Auckland City, this fee simply for competing accounts for over five times their annual turnover last year and will make them by far the most lucrative club in Oceanic football.
As such, this will further skew the competition and reinforce disparities between the relative haves and have-nots in that part of the world. Having already won nine New Zealand Football Championships and 13 Oceanic Champions Leagues, will there be a time where Auckland don’t easily hoover up both of these competitions year in, year out as a matter of course because of their involvement this summer? It’s difficult to envisage another scenario.
The USA: football’s new frontier
The first tournament of this version of the Club World Cup will be played in the United States as it prepares to host the World Cup next year. Giving the US hosting duties for both of these tournaments is a major aspect of FIFA’s plan to crack the American market.
In a move reminiscent of the aggressive colonial market expansions of the 17th and 18th centuries, this is FIFA planting its flag in America, attempting to target this untapped market to grow its brand.
Infantino will do anything to achieve this, including sycophantically cosying up to the nation’s President, who will want that favour returned when the US government attempts to use the power of football to its own ends next summer.
US political tensions
As with next summer’s World Cup, political tensions in the US may also make the tournament unviable for fans to attend – not the best way to drum up interest. This competition will be played out to a backdrop of protests and unrest in American cities.
Los Angeles, which hosted the tournament’s first true heavyweight clash between PSG and Atletico Madrid last Sunday evening, has seen particularly hostile protests in response to the surge of arrests of non-criminal migrants by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
Why would fans from around the world feel safe travelling to America to watch their team when they could be harassed and even locked up by ICE agents for not constantly carrying proper documentation? Could football fans from Latin America or the Middle East be guaranteed safety when the country to which they are heading seems to fundamentally distrust foreigners, especially those from their part of the globe?
Maybe this has something to do with the swathes of unbought tickets FIFA has been desperate to flog for matches at these massive American stadia.
Qualification confusion undermines credibility
There are also issues surrounding qualification for the tournament. A European club’s participation is based on their performance in the Champions League over the last four years, with a maximum of two clubs per nation permitted into the competition.
Clubs like Chelsea find themselves on the plane by virtue of winning the Champions League in 2021 despite only one member of that squad remaining. Yet the champions of the two best football leagues in the world this year, Liverpool and Barcelona, have not made the cut.
This makes a mockery of proclaiming the winner of the Club World Cup the best club in the world.
Inter Miami, who kicked off the tournament with a tight goalless draw against Egyptian side Al Ahly, were somehow granted a place via a mysterious additional “host country” slot, seemingly just because Lionel Messi leads their line and David Beckham sits on their board. FIFA know the eyeballs the two could attract. Could it be this, and not the club’s achievements, which earned them a place?
If FIFA doesn’t care about the sanctity of the sporting competition, why should we?
Too much football
We are constantly being told how there is too much football being played nowadays. The lack of real estate in the footballing calendar is an issue competitions like this will always face. As much as FIFA would like to, they cannot insert extra days into the Gregorian calendar so they can make money staging Borussia Dortmund vs Fluminense.
A study by FIFPRO, the world’s biggest football players’ union, recently reported that players should be given a mandatory four-week off-season break to mitigate the risk of injuries and burnout. Throwing another month-long competition into the mix when many of the players are coming off the back of gruelling seasons doesn’t seem to be the most sensible solution to this problem.
In a recent press conference, England manager Thomas Tuchel stated that he felt Liverpool and Arsenal would be at a huge advantage in next season’s Premier League title race due to non-participation in the Club World Cup giving their players a chance to rest over the summer.
Not only are the players feeling the strain, but many fans of the European club game are showing signs of fatigue heading into this tournament after a long season. In an entirely unsurprising turn, this new, somewhat makeshift tournament has yet to engender the kind of emotional investment that the more established competitions have amongst supporters. This may explain some of the apathy that has characterised the build-up to the Club World Cup in recent weeks and months.
Who really wants it?
All this being said, the Club World Cup will be taken seriously by the big boys.
The prize fund for winning the competition stands at £97mn for a European club (yes, the prize money varies based on the club’s geography). Even English clubs who are members of the richest football league on the planet would do well to add such a sum to their bottom line. In a world of Profit and Sustainability Rules and financial restrictions, this could give them the means to bring an extra world class player or two to the club.
Triumph in the US would also bring prestige as the winners will be able to call themselves the first true club world champions. For Real Madrid, who see themselves as the greatest club in the world, this would be a title appropriate to the club’s grandeur and one they certainly crave.
For Manchester City or PSG, being world champions would further the sportswashing projects of the regimes of the nation states that back these clubs.
As the tournament is being held in the USA, clubs will want to achieve on the pitch as they, like FIFA, attempt to establish their brands within the growing US football fan culture. For these clubs, the ownerships’ desire to win has been tangibly evidenced by their willingness to usher summer signings and managerial appointments like Xabi Alonso through the door before they head to the States.
On a less Eurocentric note, these transcontinental competitions have often been taken more seriously by clubs from other continents, particularly South Americans, who have savoured the opportunity to give their European counterparts a bloody nose. Despite the financial disparities, with the jury still out on how the most star-studded teams in the Club World Cup will approach it, their competitiveness and conditioning (given that they are currently mid-season) could give the South American sides the edge.
FIFA often acts like it understands football fans before quickly demonstrating that it has no idea what the average supporter wants. But FIFA does seem to understand one thing: football’s gravitational pull. They know we won’t be able to resist the allure of novel matchups between the elite teams from all over the world.
Despite everything, when Bayern Munich face Boca Juniors, I know I’ll still be watching.
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