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The final of the FIFA Club World Cup took place last Saturday, and by no means was that common knowledge. The annual tournament takes the winners of the AFC Champions League (Asia), CAF Champions League (Africa), CONCACAF Champions League (North America), Copa Libertadores (South America), OFC Champions League (Oceania) and UEFA Champions League (Europe) along with the host nation’s national champion and puts them in a knockout tournament in December before many leagues’ winter breaks.
Going by the name of the tournament, one would assume it matters by just having the words, “FIFA World Cup” within it, but in reality it holds little to no importance in the soccer world.
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The first knock on the Club World Cup is the level of competition. The best teams in the world are in Europe, and to only have the champion participate hardly makes it a World Cup. Yes, it takes the champions from all around the world ,but the competition is simply not of the same pedigree elsewhere.
Since the tournament’s creation, European teams have been champions 7 times, and the only other confederation that have won the tournament is CONMEBOL with 4 titles. The last time a non-European team won was in 2012, when CONMEBOL representative Corinthians defeated a less-than-flattering Chelsea side that kept John Terry, Oscar, and Daniel Sturridge on the bench.
Barcelona was the European team participating this year, and Luis Enrique had previously said he would not be taking any risks with injured players. Last year, Real Madrid did not even play a full strength squad until the final because they did not want to risk injury that could affect their domestic league and Champions’ League campaigns.
The tournament has tried to add incentive to winning the tournament with full-strength squads by rewarding the winner $5,000,000. However, this is still less than the amount a team receives for getting to the knockout stage of the Champions’ League. This incentive only works on the teams from elsewhere, but these teams need to play their full squad regardless to prevent getting blown out by UEFA teams.
Case in point: Barcelona lifted the trophy this year with consecutive 3-0 victories where they hardly exerted themselves during the match.
Other than an uneven level of play, the tournament takes place at perhaps the worst time of the season. December is midseason for almost all European leagues, and in places like England, there is no winter break. This adds two games to a team’s schedule right before Christmas in the middle of the season filled with travel anyway, only adding to a team’s fatigue.
Luckily for Barcelona, there is a winter break in Spain, but regardless this is two extra games. On the flip side, they will also miss playing in the upcoming round giving them a game-in-hand over fellow title contenders Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid, which can be blessing.
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For the other confederations like CONMEBOL and CONCACAF, most of their respective leagues have just finished up within the last month. Their champions, America and River Plate, will be sending fatigued teams who have just finished a long campaign.
It is hard to motivate players to get going after the season has already ended to play for a trophy that does not mean all that much to most clubs in the world.
It seems that FIFA does not even think too highly of the tournament as they used it for a practice ground for new technology just three years ago. In 2012, FIFA installed Hawkeye, the tennis technology that determines whether the ball is in or out on challenges, into Yokohama Stadium in Japan to help determine goalline decisions.
They also installed GoalRef into the balls which is a sensor that alerts the referee on a watch if the ball crosses the goal-line or not. This testing of technology would never go over in domestic leagues or the European Championship, but yet FIFA allowed the tournament to be turned into a testing ground while at the same time supposedly holding the tournament in high regard.
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The tournament’s structure does not help its case as well. The structure allows the European champion and CONMEBOL champion to receive byes to the semifinals while the rest of the participants start at the quarterfinal stage, with the exception of the OFC champion, which has a play-in game with the host country’s champions.
It is no surprise that the champions of this tournament have only came from Europe and South America as there is no physical toll on them, which makes it very hard for an already-inferior squad to beat one of the two. The whole structure should be thrown out altogether and have it remade to emulate maybe the actual FIFA World Cup taking a certain amount of team from all confederations to contest a round-robin stage before the knockout stage.
Even with these changes, the average player wage of an European side in the highest league is over $1,100,000 even when taking into account the smallest sides. Brazil’s top league has an average salary of $750,000 and Liga MX has an average salary of just over $500,000. This poses an already unfair advantage to the European sides, as financially, other leagues around the world simply cannot keep up.
European sides will always be the hot destination for the world’s biggest and best players making the playing field inevitably unfair. The Cristiano Ronaldos and Lionel Messis of the world will never opt to play anywhere else than Europe as it is the world’s biggest and most lavish stage.
What all this boils down to is that the tournament is just not relevant and most likely will never be so. In last years tournament in Morocco, the average attendance of the tournament was 28,500 people. The high of the tournament was 38,342 which was the final in a stadium that seated 45,000. For the sport of soccer, 45,000 is a rather average-sized venue for a global tournament.
The fact that a stadium of that size cannot fill up for a “World Club” final is a telltale sign that the tournament is just not as intriguing as FIFA would like to think. The tournament has even had trouble finding a host nation for it.
For the 2015 Club World Cup, only Japan and India interested, and in fact, there have only been four different hosts for the tournament: Morocco, Japan, United Arab Emirates and Brazil. The revenue from this tournament does not even make it all that lucrative a prospect for host nations, and it is not worth it for countries to put in the effort that goes in to hosting a tournament, including restructuring their own league schedules.
The World Club Cup used to be contested simply between the European Cup and Copa Libertadores champions, the two confederation champions that would arguably provide the most competitive matchup. It might be past time for FIFA to do away with this expanded tournament and revert back to the original format, whether in a 2-legged format for both teams to have a chance to play at home, or with the one-off match that used to take place in Tokyo.
Perhaps under new leadership this coming year, this will be an issue that will be revisited by the world’s governing body.