Football body mulling running competition every two years

The Club World Cup trophy verges on iconic. No, not the one handed to Chelsea in New Jersey after they beat Paris Saint-Germain in last month’s final. The other one, sitting in the Oval Office, making memes every time it pops up during a major US presidential announcement or high-level meeting.

Just this week it cameoed in an urgent audience with Volodymyr Zelensky, this time flanked by several European allies, seeking an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. There it was, the extravagant Tiffany & Co collaboration inspired by NASA’s missions into space, in the background of the most important gathering since Trump “made no deal until there’s a deal” with Vladimir Putin in Alaska a few days ago.

The 24-carat gold-plated silverware, with its rotating discs and periodic table and astronomical maps, was hand-delivered to the White House in March by FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who created it and had his name engraved on it – twice. It is, according to FIFA, one of three existing trophies, along with the original version at FIFA headquarters in Zurich and the one now belonging to Chelsea.

Trump said he was told he could keep his, and the juxtaposition of a global crisis and a football trophy – along with a winner’s medal, possibly meant for Noni Madueke (The Art of the Steal) – in the same room gives such Big Trump Energy it has fast become a source of comic relief. That’s to go with last month’s vainglorious pantomime at MetLife Stadium, where Trump presented Chelsea’s trophy to Reece James then proceeded to remain on stage with the players for the traditional trophy lift as Infantino awkwardly attempted to manoeuvre him out of the limelight. Man of the match Cole Palmer admitted to being “a bit confused”.

It all makes it kind of difficult to take seriously the notion that this Disneyland of a reconstituted tournament could reportedly, after 2029, take place every two years instead of every four and feature 48 teams.

The relentlessly expansionist Infantino has been playing Honey, I Blew Up The Kid since the start of his tenure, and the 2026 men’s World Cup and 2031 Women’s World Cup will both involve 48 teams for the first time. His transformation of this year’s Club World Cup to 32 teams – from the long-running and largely ignored seven-team format contested by six continental champions plus one host club – is keeping with this model, and the next step appears inevitable.

Staged as 63 games across 11 American cities, it was divisive. For the sparse crowds in cavernous NFL stadiums (over a million empty seats defied Infantino’s prediction of “63 Super Bowls in one month”). For the extreme weather, the quality of pitches, the manufactured hype. The Saudi money. Player welfare concerns.

On the latter, Infantino has been the subject of intense hostility from domestic leagues and players’ unions, to the point FIFA has been fighting legal fires over the world governing body’s alleged “abuse of dominance” and lack of consultation when adding to an insanely congested international calendar.

This is understandable. A Europe-based player who participates in Euro 2024, the 2025 Club World Cup and the 2026 World Cup will effectively have zero rest for three straight off-seasons. There is no room to move, and how the Club World Cup affects the domestic season of Chelsea and PSG et al may yet be revealing. Then back into the oppressive North American summer heat they will go for a World Cup across three countries in the US, Canada, and Mexico. There’s nothing like watching an injured player doing his best work.

“FIFA was put on earth really to regulate the global game and to run international football, and the Club World Cup is a move into club football,” Premier League chief executive Richard Masters said earlier this month. FIFPro president Sergio Marchi, meanwhile, labelled it “nothing more than a fiction created by FIFA” and its “grandiloquent staging inevitably reminiscent of the ‘bread and circuses’ of Nero’s Rome”.

There are so many more voices in this debate, but for the sake of brevity, let’s stick with former Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp, who called it “the worst idea ever implemented in football in this regard”. Arsene Wenger, a vocal critic of fixture congestion throughout his previous role overseeing Arsenal, has now taken a “fantastic competition” view in his current capacity as FIFA’s chief of global football development. “A real Club World Cup was needed,” said Wenger, who recently campaigned for a World Cup every two years.

He added that every club involved would favour this format moving forward – and of course they would when the prize fund is $US1 billion. Chelsea received an estimated $US114.6 million; it is little surprise other big European clubs would like a piece of the pie. Real Madrid’s reported push for a biennial cycle is apparently supported by other clubs who failed to qualify for this year’s tournament, including Barcelona, Manchester United, Liverpool and Napoli. The proposal for 48 teams fits that agenda given that, unless FIFA lifts its cap of 12 European entrants and two from each country, expansion is the only way to ensure more European clubs (notwithstanding other cross-continental quirks in the qualifying criteria).

But this tells us what the Club World Cup is not. It is not a bucket-list trophy like the World Cup or continental championships. The value is not in the prestige of the title. Had Inter Miami (demolished by PSG in the round of 16) won, Lionel Messi would not have retired any more contented for the privilege (he already has three of the old Club World Cups with Barcelona). There is no way he would have picked this space-age trophy over the World Cup he finally added to his otherwise complete CV in 2022.

That is not to say the football was bad. Despite the naf, corporate anti-culture, the actual football was quite good, headlined by novelty rivalries and upsets galore. Al Hilal knocked out Manchester City and Auckland City held Boca Juniors to a draw. Then there was the standout quality and colour of Brazilian sides Flamengo (beat Chelsea), Botafogo (beat PSG), Fluminense (beat Inter Milan and made the semi-finals) and Palmeiras (topped their group and made the quarters).

In this sense, the organisers were savvy, offering an extended hand to the peripheral or uninitiated football fan, and to America’s diaspora who comprised a portion of these numbers (not that this was intended given the Trump administration’s stance on diversity and immigration). It offered hope for the future of such an event, if treated more modestly.

But FIFA is nothing if not bloated, and the money speaks for itself: the revenue averaged out at $US33 million per match. At that rate, why not add even more games? The problem here is that the world governing body is failing to recognise the law of diminishing returns that are less tangible than cold, hard cash. All that money has cheapened the global football ecosystem, in a surreal sort of inflation that disrupts its delicate balance without actually distributing wealth in a more equitable way. Diluting the game’s meaning without addressing the yawning gap between rich and poor.

Infantino, presumably the Nero in Marchi’s metaphor, nevertheless hailed his pet project as “a huge, huge, huge success” on the eve of the final. He did so from New York’s Trump Tower, where FIFA has set up a base and where he refused to answer any questions regarding anything unrelated to the Club World Cup (like Saudi Arabia being awarded hosting rights to the 2034 World Cup) and even some things related to the Club World Cup (like Saudi’s Surj Sports Investments largely bankrolling the tournament).

And so, once again, propaganda wins the day. Soft power and influence and sportswashing remain the modus operandi, and Trump’s trophy will keep playing its geopolitical part from the Oval Office.

Infantino is somewhere up in space, mapping the approximate positions of planets at the time of FIFA’s foundation in 1904 and the Club World Cup’s opening match in 2025. Orbiting the earth in pursuit of celestial symbols to engrave on his trophy, just to give others the chance to “hold the world of club football in their hands”.

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