Club World Cup Piles More Pressure On FIFA Decision Making
source fifa
FIFA President, Gianni Infantino's expanded Club World Cup tournament this summer was supposed to be an all encompassing world wide showcase of the best and the brightest in the beautiful game of football, but as was sadly predicted by those in the wider world wide fanbase, it has been beset by issues, controversies and full of entertainment for all the wrong reasons.
Hosted in the United States this summer for all of their well known bravado, pomp and circumstance, invited teams fitting some of kind of criteria we assume included part timers and sides people had never heard of before. For those fans who like a flutter on their live sports betting, the odds on this competition were going to be entirely new.
It was certainly not the world's creme de la creme as the billing had suggested, but then with an invented additional transfer window (Financial Fair Play anyway?) some sides took full advantage and we had the fun of seeing Real Madrid pay Liverpool £10 million to secure Trent Alexander-Arnold's early release (30 odd days) even though they had agreed to sign him as a free agent, and Infantino hocking Cristiano Ronaldo around for a 35 day contract just so he could take part.
With the US hosting, Inter Miami were invited to take part for, well, Lionel Messi but as the tournament kicked off with a bore draw as they faced Al Ahly (Palmeiras v Porto was also scoreless), Paris Saint-Germain provided some entertainment with a 4-0 victory over Atletico, and in amongst areas of stadiums being shut down owing to a lack of ticket sales, German side Bayern Munich wowed everyone with a storming 10-0 victory over Auckland City.
Not a bad first day of action if you were watching as an accountant, but for most fans the only question on their lips was why the storied 34 titled Bundesliga champions had been paired against the New Zealand part timers. But we learnt lots about Auckland.
Bayern's revenue for the last financial year was £810 million, Auckland pulled in a mighty £488,000. Auckland's amateurs have a salary cap of around £66 a week, how would Harry Kane survive given his reported £400,000 a week? Just for taking part most European clubs could pull £29.6 million from the competition, Auckland will be paid £2.6 million.
We already know that should one of the key European sides go all the way and win the competition it could be worth £97 odd million to them - that is only ten or so million less than the team finishing in 20th place in the Premier League would get at the end of the season, so given this is already so heavily weighted in favour of the bigger European clubs, it is not really about growing the worldwide game is it?
It certainly has very little to do with sporting integrity, but maybe that is why we will see mismatches like this as the favoured teams with a bigger broadcasting pull will be wanted at the latter stages will they not. Whilst fans might like to see the underdogs cause an upset, the money men involved will not want primary school teachers, insurance brokers, barbers and a Coca-Cola sales representative upsetting the bigger sides will they.
Auckland certainly provided some first though, 22 year old left back Nathan Lobo will be sitting a University exam from his hotel room during the competition, and we should not forget the regulars in their team that are not even there because they could not get the time off work given their day jobs.
Let us not forget, Auckland are there on merit and are appearing for the 12th time, but in the interests of growing the worldwide game does the format reward their merit as it effectively ensures they are just making up the numbers and that sides like them will in no way progress further.
The Club World Cup will be good for headlines for the next few weeks, and there is already further talk of discounted tickets given the lack of interest and early expectations for Chelsea's kick off against Los Angeles suggest the 71,000 capacity Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta will be more than half empty, but it is already clear that it will not be the success that FIFA had hoped for.
But most of us knew that already didn't we.