Make no mistake about it: as a concept, the first-ever 32-team FIFA Club World Cup is good for the sport, from pretty much any vantage point. The entire sport rests on the club game and yet there was virtually zero opportunity for teams from different continents to square off against each other in competitive matches. In a globalized world dominated by the big European clubs from the big European leagues, it’s a chance for the rest of the world to showcase what they do.
“We’re there to compete, but also to showcase what African excellence looks like,” said Tlhopie Motsepe, president of South Africa’s Mamelodi Sundowns, who will play their inaugural game against South Korea’s Ulsan on June 17.
“If we come back and people say ‘Wow, do you remember the team from South Africa? Remember the way they played?’ That’s exciting for me. That would be success.”
Five years ago, FIFA President Gianni Infantino said he wanted to make the sport more inclusive and pave the way when “at least 50 clubs from all continents” are “at a top competitive level.” We can be as cynical as we like about his motives, but what can’t be argued is that clubs beyond the European heavyweights getting to compete is a first, tiny (but crucial) step toward that vision.
Maybe the system is shot; maybe the hurdles are too great, and nobody outside the 15 or so clubs that constitute the European elite will ever be a global juggernaut. (That is, without bankrolling enormous — and unsustainable — losses, like the Saudi Pro League clubs are trying to do.) But without a global club tournament, they definitely won’t get there. That’s the point.
Yet you don’t have to ignore the negatives of this tournament. It comes at the end of a long European season with many players already running on fumes, prompting organizations such as FIFPro, the Players’ Union, to sound the alarm and even take legal action against FIFA.
From the start, it has felt as if this whole thing was driven by money and sucking up to the big cash-generating European clubs, as evidenced by the clashes between Infantino and UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin. (And even in this iteration, less than half the prize money is merit-based, with the rest doled out based on what FIFA calls a “participation pillar,” but which smells an awful lot like an “appearance fee,” with the likes of Real Madrid getting multiples of what an Auckland City will receive.) Inter Miami — and Lionel Messi — getting shoehorned in to represent the host nation not as Major League Soccer champions, but as Supporters’ Shield winners, reeks of the same need to get the big names on board.
Then there’s the fact that FIFA pretty much overpromised. They said the tournament was going to generate more than $2 billion in revenue — a billion from broadcast rights, half a billion from sponsorship and another half a billion from tickets sales. Maybe they’ll get there, but if they do, Infantino can perhaps thank his friends in Saudi Arabia, who have chipped in with sponsorships and a billion-dollar investment in the streamer DAZN, a platform that reportedly spent a billion dollars in December to buy the global media rights for this competition.
As for the box office sales, earlier this week tickets that were originally listed for $250-350 to attend the tournament opener between Inter Miami and Al Ahly were marked down as low as $55. Infantino was guaranteeing a sellout for the opener, despite thousands of tickets still being available. We’ll find out soon enough, but it’s pretty evident that if the hometown team (Inter Miami) can’t sell out the first game despite having one of the unquestioned GOATs (that Messi guy) on the pitch, somebody’s projections were way off.
If all of this leaves a bad taste, well … it should. FIFA could have sold this competition on the fact that it was important and could become, in time, really important. Or they could have simply said they were focused on staging a lucrative event. Instead, they tried to do both — had it been just about the money, Auckland City wouldn’t be here, for example.
And yet, amid all this, there’s an indisputable fact. The world of club soccer is coming together in a way it was never able to before. Clubs that were shut out from the big time by geography get to have their turn on the big stage, and the snobbishness coming from some quarters is reminiscent of the way some nations, such as England, snubbed the World Cup for the first 20 years of its existence, deeming it beneath them.
The inaugural World Cup, hosted by Uruguay in 1930, was a bit of a mess too. There were supposed to be sixteen participants, but two (Japan and Thailand, formerly Siam) withdrew at the last minute. Another, Egypt, literally missed the boat that was supposed to take the team to Montevideo. Both finalists (Argentina and Uruguay) wanted to use their own balls, so the referee decided they’d play one half with one ball and the second half with the other. Oh, and the United States reached the semifinal.
Does any of this seem normal to you? No? Well look at the World Cup now and consider what it has become not just from a sporting perspective, but from a sociocultural (and, yes, economic) perspective too.
Can the Club World Cup get there? Or will it fizzle out like some of FIFA’s past hokey innovations (hello, silver goal)?
We’ll find out, but not only is it worth a shot here — it’s pretty much the sport’s moral duty to give it a shot.
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