The envious, avaricious eye of FIFA President Gianni Infantino has for several years been wandering to the zeros at the end of the revenue streams generated by UEFA’s successful and globally popular Champions League (UCL). The almost complete lack of public interest in FIFA’s Club World Cup (a seven-team tournament currently taking place in Saudi Arabia, the home of political oppression, summary executions and crushed human rights) has only served to anger and motivate Infantino to reform that moribund competition into a cash cow for the mother ship.
This week FIFA announced the details of its proposed new 32-team Club World Cup, which will run for a month in the summer of 2025, hosted by our very own United States of America. The competition is slated to take place every four years and is heavily weighted in favor of the European continent, which will provide 12 of the 32 teams. You can be sure that most of them will make the round of 16 once the group phase has dispensed with the likes of Auckland City, Urawa Red Diamonds and the Seattle Sounders. No offense, but you are only there to make up the numbers so that FIFA can have its own version of the lucrative UCL on foreign soil.
Congratulations are in order to FIFA for actually finding a gap in the soccer calendar to stage this needless mess, for which there is absolutely no sporting justification. The de facto best club team in the world is the team that wins the UCL, a fact that will not be disputed by fans of Auckland City and the Sounders.
The sport’s unregulated free market has drawn the world’s best players to its richest competition, which has become depressingly predictable and immune to upsets, but the standard of its play far outstrips any other soccer competition — and that includes the World Cup. Every professional club and player aspires to be a part of the UCL elite. It’s like getting into Harvard, but with Harvard paying you the fees to attend. So, a Club World Cup is superfluous. It is also damaging to player welfare.
Imagine, just for a second, that you are Jack Grealish of Manchester City. In 2023-24 you will play a full season for your club across four competitions, and then you will play for England at the 2024 European Championship. Another full club season is immediately followed by the Club World Cup in the summer of 2025 – City has already qualified as last year’s UCL winners. Then, yet another full season followed by the World Cup in the summer of 2026, followed by yet another club season. In the summer of 2027, you might get a few weeks off if you’re not already injured, or if you haven’t retired due to the pressure.
You could point out that Grealish earns so much just for kicking a ball around that you can hardly waste a tear for his plight. The international players’ union, FIFPRO, rightly sees things otherwise. It issued a statement saying that the format for the Mundial de Clubes FIFA (they even managed to give it a pretentious name) “demonstrates a lack of consideration for the mental and physical health of participating players, as well as a disregard for their personal and family lives.”
FIFPRO cites “the extreme mental and physical pressures at the pinnacle of the game” that can lead to players suffering “exhaustion, physical injuries, mental health issues, diminished performance, and risks to career longevity.” The competition has been planned, it continues, “without implementing appropriate safeguards, and without any say from the players who are at the forefront of driving the game’s popularity and revenue generation with their skill and endeavour.”
What can be done about it? The teams could refuse to participate, but how many clubs can you name that would place the welfare of its players above the prospect of Exciting New Revenue Streams? Exactly. FIFPRO, meanwhile, has called for discussions “with all football stakeholders about the introduction of a basic set of player health and safety regulations to support the welfare of professional footballers.” Good luck with wringing more than one or two token concessions from FIFA on that score.
There is a more radical course of action, however. FIFPRO could (and should) call upon its members to announce that they will not participate in the competition until there has been an independent medical review of the physical and mental effects on professional soccer players compelled to perform over several successive 12-month calendars. If FIFA refuses (and they’ve never been keen on independent bodies looking into their affairs, so they will), then come June 2025 the players should simply pack their bags and take themselves off to somewhere warm.
It’s the job of a union to protect its members. If those members vote to strike, then FIFA will be forced to sit up and take notice. If the union recommends “discussions” with vague goals, then FIFA will issue worthy, wordy press releases while laughing up its sleeve at having smuggled in a Super League via the back door. The players in solidarity have way more power than they maybe realize. If they fail to use it, then they cannot complain when the unscrupulous business of soccer squeezes them for every last drop of their time and capacity.
Photos: Harold Cunningham/FIFA &Pascal Bitz/FIFA