Some had questioned how seriously Manchester City would take the Club World Cup, but Pep Guardiola was quick to assert his determination to lift the trophy ahead of Friday’s final. “We want to win it,” said the City manager when asked if there is a temptation to rest players against Fluminense.
And win it they did, dismantling Fluminense 4–0. “We had the feeling we would close the chapter, we won all the titles, there’s nothing else to win,” Guardiola said after City lifted their fifth trophy this year.
Guardiola was right to point out that City had this lone empty space in their trophy case, but the fact he was even asked about his motivation to win it underlines the awkward standing of the competition in the global soccer landscape. It has never been widely embraced as a marquee tournament like the Champions League.
FIFA has plans to change this, though. From 2025 the Club World Cup will be expanded to 32 teams and played every four years. The inaugural new-look tournament will be hosted by the United States over 29 days in the summer with participants limited to just two from each country over a four-year qualifying cycle.
There will be 12 European clubs invited with places allocated on the basis of performances in the Champions League. This means Chelsea, Manchester City and Real Madrid have already secured their spot in the 2025 Club World Cup which will have an overall prize pot of over $50m. This financial incentive will push teams to take the tournament seriously.
All this illustrates the political tug-of-war taking place between FIFA and UEFA over the future of club soccer. Gianni Infantino sees the Club World Cup as a vehicle to FIFA gaining more control over the club game which until now has almost exclusively been under UEFA’s jurisdiction thanks to Europe’s dominance.
Infantino has spent the last few years looking for a way to wrestle some political power away from UEFA within club soccer. When the European Super League was announced in 2021, it was believed in some quarters that FIFA were secretly supporting it in the hope it would disrupt the European club soccer eco-system which UEFA sits at the top of.
This doesn’t do much to improve club soccer as a whole, though. The schedule is already packed enough for players at the elite level of the sport without the expansion of the Club World Cup, a tournament most consider something of a sideshow in the grand scheme of things. Players are speaking out against the plans.
“For a top player playing at a top club, the calendar is very demanding,” Real Madrid full back Dani Carvajal said about the expanded Club World Cup. “With the new Club World Cup, we won’t ever get a summer off. I agree with [coach Carlo Ancelotti] and other people who’ve said there are too many games. So many injuries isn’t a coincidence.”
Jurgen Klopp is another prominent figure working in club soccer who has publicly called out the demands being placed on players at the top level. The expanded Club World Cup will only exacerbate the issue of over-scheduling with players of the clubs involved having to forego either time off or pre-season over the summer. They deserve better.
Club soccer is reaching a breaking point. Several rival governing bodies, leagues and competitions are jostling for position to the point that overlap is now happening. For example, the expanded 2025 Club World Cup will take place at exactly the same time as the 2025 Gold Cup. There simply isn’t enough time to fit everything into the schedule.
Between expanding the World Cup and the Club World Cup, FIFA is attempting to broaden its influence in both international and club soccer, but not to improve the standard of either. They are failing in their role as the sport’s gatekeepers and getting enveloped in a political tussle they don’t need to be involved with. FIFA’s plan could backfire if the soccer community unites to push back.
