The Club World Cup Sucks: Let’s Fix It
Let’s face it: the Club World Cup is stupendously boring.
In its current form the tournament seems like a mere afterthought on the football calendar —attracting little viewership and almost no media attention compared to the real World Cup.
Each year at Christmas a European superpower takes an early holiday in December, playing two matches against AFC/CONMEBOL teams which usually turn out to be a walk in the park.
So how can we make the Club World Cup just a bit more interesting?
The Participants
At the moment, the winner of each continent’s regional tournament is invited to play in the Club World Cup. In 2017 the teams were:
- Real Madrid (UCL winners)
- Al-Jazira (winners of the UAE Arabian Gulf League — the host nation’s best team automatically secures a spot)
- Grêmio (Copa Libertadores winners)
- Pachuca (CONCACAF Champions League winners)
- Wydad Casablanca (CAF Champions League winners)
- Auckland City (Oceania Football Confederation Champions League winners)
- Urawa Red Diamonds (Asian Champions League winners)
Immediately we can spot a problem. There’s a large gap in quality between the teams competing— Madrid is obviously a much better team than Grêmio, whom the Spanish team beat in the final.
The two finalists only played two games each, as they were both seeded directly into the semi-finals. By doing this, FIFA is basically admitting that the tournament is nothing more than a hassle for the “unfortunate” UCL winner of last season. They think that if Madrid had to play four games for a shot at a measly $5m in prize money in the middle of the season they probably wouldn’t have turned up.
There needs to be more teams from more countries to make the tournament interesting. We need to pick from the biggest leagues (based on the standard of football, similar to how the UCL decides how many teams from each league get a spot in the group stages).
To begin with, let’s include the winner of each of Europe’s top four leagues (La Liga, BPL, Serie A, Ligue 1) plus the winner of the CL and Europa League.
To add some variety, let’s include two teams from each region: the winner of the best pro league and the winner of the regional tournament.
- Winner of the MLS + the CONCACAF Champions League
- Winner of the Copa Libertadores + the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A
You get the point. For each of the continents other than Europe (Asia, Africa, NA, SA) we take two teams, bringing the total to fifteen including the host nation’s domestic champion.
Sixteen teams is plenty for a mini tournament — if we had a full blown thirty-two team competition it would be very costly to set up, and would require adding some less capable teams. Although we would probably have more magic of the cup moments like we see in the FA Cup.
Keeping the Club World Cup short will keep it interesting. Having only sixteen teams would also ensure that the competition wouldn’t require massive expenditure on new stadiums and transport infrastructure, and wouldn’t disrupt the schedules of the teams competing (too badly, at least).
So to make sixteen let’s add the winner of either the Australian A-League or the Saudi Professional League (or both if the CL/EL winner does the double), as these teams have to battle with the might of Japan and the Chinese Super League in the Asian Champions League.
The Schedule
At the moment the Club World Cup is held in December, which is a hassle because most leagues run from the autumn until the summer (in the Northern Hemisphere). In England there’s no winter break, meaning that the current timing can be a big headache for clubs trying to secure top spot in the BPL.
If the Club World Cup was played in the summer, these issues could be mostly avoided. However, clubs playing in the Americas, where the season runs from March/May to October/December, would still have issues.
Instead of holding it every year, the tournament needs to be run every four years — like an actual World Cup — to make it a special occasion rather than a boring formality. The cycle of 2017, 2021, 2025 etc should work well, but this might mean that the Confederations Cup would need to be moved.
The Prize Money
$5m is peanuts. With tournament sponsors like Coca-Cola and Qatar Airways, FIFA should be able to scrape together a lot more money for the winners and runners up.
If the prize was decent, but not too high, something awesome would happen. The best European teams would try pretty hard, fielding mostly full-strength squads. However, the minnows would work their soccer socks off to try and topple the giants, because even a fairly modest amount of money would mean an awful lot to a smaller club. This could create some incredible upsets which would be great for the fans, and even better for tournament TV revenue.
What’s Next?
It’s hard to be optimistic about the future of the Club World Cup considering how it’s currently run.
As much as I’d love to have a cute little tournament featuring the best club talent the world has to offer, it’s hard to see something like this actually happening. But we can still hope that the competition is reformed somewhat — maybe one day it’ll morph into something that’s at least worth turning the TV on for.
What do you think? Is the Club World Cup worth investing time and money in, or should we stick to regional club tournaments and the actual World Cup? Is the current Club World Cup format worth continuing, or should we change it up a bit?
