The Club World Cup 2025 in the U.S. the big issues analysed ·

30 Jun 2024, 00:00

FIFA’s confirmation of an expanded Club World Cup (CWC) has divided football.

Concerns have been raised over cramming even more matches into an already crowded calendar, prompting fears of yet more injuries, and that the authorities are prioritising commercial gains over player welfare.

But the competition, which will be held in the United States between June 15 and July 13, 2025, isn’t going anywhere, so the sport’s stakeholders are going to have to work out a plan to alleviate the concerns.

Here, The Athletic analyses the major issues around the tournament.

How does the revamped competition work?

The new CWC will take place every four years and will consist of eight groups of four teams, with each side playing each other once. Only the top two will qualify for the single-legged knockout stages, starting with a last-16 round.

European teams will take up 12 of the 32 spots in the new CWC. Four of those slots are awarded to the UEFA Champions League winners in each of the four years before 2025.

This means Chelsea (2021), Real Madrid (2022) and Manchester City (2023) have already qualified, as have Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain. The remaining eight spots will be determined by a club ranking based on the same four-year period.

Six clubs will be from CONMEBOL (South America), four from CONCACAF (North, Central America and Caribbean), four from AFC (Asia), four from CAF (Africa), one from OFC (Oceania), and the host country — the United States — can also put a club forward.

Karim Benzema’s Real Madrid won the 2022 Club World Cup (Michael Steele/Getty Images)

The ‘nobody wants it’ problem

The new CWC should not have come as a surprise to any of football’s key stakeholders.

FIFA said in December 2022 that the revamped format would include 32 teams. It was then voted on in March at a FIFA Council meeting, where it was unanimously waved through.

Despite that, the overriding reaction has been one of shock and condemnation.

In 2020, Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, raised the idea of “fewer, but more competitive matches to safeguard the health of players”, adding that “it’s not science fiction”.

Gianni Infantino had suggested there would be less, but higher-quality football (Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty Images)

But with an expanded World Cup, expanded UEFA competitions and more international fixtures, the calendar is more crowded than ever. Do the select few whose clubs qualify for the CWC want to spend up to a month in the U.S. after a long season? Who knows. Will they have much choice? No.

FIFA will say the new format is great for football and brilliant for the clubs: after all, being able to call yourself a world champion is an appealing prospect. Others, however, will argue nobody wants to see yet another tournament added to the calendar.

It is not all doom and gloom for FIFA, though. The European Club Association (ECA) — the group which represents Europe’s biggest clubs, including the Premier League giants — posted on social media that they “warmly welcome” the addition of the Club World Cup’s new format and called it “fantastic news for club football”.

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The ‘players will be broken’ problem

The most common complaint about the new CWC format is that it increases the risk of players sustaining injuries. Such is the format of the competition, a team will play a minimum of three games but, if they were to get to the final, it could be as many as seven.

“Players are getting flogged left, right and centre,” Callum Walsh, a former head of sports science in the Premier League, tells The Athletic. “Sports science and medical research is better than ever, but the problem is that everyone wants a piece of the athlete.

“The fact there is rarely a break is a real problem. Players’ careers are going to be shortened and I don’t think you will get lots of players playing at the highest level late into their thirties.”

Asked to highlight the problems associated with overloading the players, Walsh responded: “Anything around the hips, knees and ankles in terms of wear and tear on joints. You also have a risk of soft-tissue injuries and mental fatigue.”

Injuries to overworked players is an increasing concern (Pierre-Philippe Marcou/AFP via Getty Images)

FIFPRO, a global trade union that represents more than 65,000 players, said FIFA’s confirmation of the tournament shows a “lack of consideration for the mental and physical health of participating players”.

Maheta Molango, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), was equally critical, saying “any expression of concern for player welfare is merely a pretence” and that “players gave become pawns in a battle for primacy between football’s governing bodies”.

At a FIFA Council meeting in March, a dedicated task force on player welfare was approved. To date, this task force is yet to meet, nor has it been assembled.

Clubs are not exactly helping themselves, either. In June 2022, it was announced that the International Football Association Board (IFAB), a body that determines football’s laws, had approved a change to allow managers to make five substitutions instead of three. This was done with player welfare in mind.

Despite managers calling for this, statistics provided by Opta breaking down the number of times the top European clubs have made five substitutions since the start of the 2022-23 campaign highlights how unusual it remains.

Which clubs make five subs most often?

Club	Five subs
Manchester City	15
PSG	21
Real Madrid	21
Tottenham	21
Arsenal	22
Manchester United	22
Liverpool	24
Chelsea	25
Newcastle	26
Barcelona	27
Bayern Munich	31
Atletico Madrid	34
Juventus	34
AC Milan	43
Napoli	46
Inter	51

The World Leagues Forum (WLF), which is chaired by Richard Masters, the Premier League’s chief executive, wrote to Infantino on Sunday to condemn the plans. Their frustration centres around the international match calendar, which FIFA controls, and the “consequences for the football economy and player welfare”.

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Questions have also been raised around FIFA’s role in terms of whether they can be both a competition organiser and governing body, especially when it comes to setting the international calendar.

“The WLF is contacting FIFA to ask for a transparent process for their calendar and competition decisions, which must involve meaningful agreements with the leagues,” a WLF statement read.

It is hard to see where additional room in the calendar to ease player burnout concerns can be created, though.

FIFA will point to the scrapping of the Confederations Cup — an eight-team international tournament — in 2019 and say that the Club World Cup is merely replacing a competition as opposed to a new one being created.

In England, efforts have already been made to reduce the number of matches, with FA Cup replays from the fifth round onwards previously being scrapped. The expectation is that third and fourth-round replays will be the next to go while the Carabao Cup is due to make its two-legged semi-finals single-legged affairs. But these changes are coming at a time when UEFA are expanding European competitions.

One reasonable theory put forward by Vincent Kompany, the Burnley manager and former Manchester City captain, was to cap the number of games an individual can play during one season, suggesting a limit of 60-65 matches.

Vincent Kompany wants a cap on how much football is played by an individual (Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)

FIFPRO are yet to endorse this idea but want to see greater regulation on players being given time off.

They think there should be a minimum of 28 days off during the close season, although they are not pushing for other competitions to be scrapped to allow for this, nor are they against the introduction of new tournaments.

Walsh believes that clubs’ sports science departments will find a way to adapt to increased demands.

“When we went into Project Restart, playing nine games in 29 days, we had to come up with a strategy,” he said. “The issue is that there is no end to this. There will always be a tournament for the players to be flying off to when the domestic season ends. Some players will be going from the Euros in June 2024 to the Club World Cup in 2025 and not finishing until the World Cup in 2026.”

The ‘rich are getting richer’ problem

There is a valid argument to this and it will likely be of concern to the teams who are not competing in the tournament. The WLF cited this in their letter to Infantino.

They believe the new CWC distorts the competitive balance in domestic leagues as it benefits a small pool of clubs and opens the door to yet more valuable commercial opportunities, which would lead to other teams falling further behind.

Every supporter wants to see their club unveil a shiny new striker, but to make those signings, clubs need to boost their commercial profile.

That is a key factor behind Manchester City, for example, deciding to visit Japan last summer. It is why Real Madrid and Manchester United flew to America.

Domestic fans have had to accept, no matter how uncomfortable, that the elite clubs they follow are global entities.

Clubs need big commercial deals to be able to sign stars such as Erling Haaland (Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)

In Manchester United’s accounts for the year ending June 2021, which covered the coronavirus pandemic, their commercial revenue was down almost £50million ($63.7m), from £279m in 2020 to £232.2m. This was largely attributed to their inability to head overseas on tour.

Clubs competing in the expanded FIFA tournament may sigh at the prospect of playing even more matches at the end of the season, but they would only be headed elsewhere.

The Premier League will be concerned about the sporting integrity element, with their 2025-26 season due to start three weeks after the Club World Cup final.

Questions are already being asked about whether the English teams travelling to the United States could field their first XI after such a short turnaround.

Masters, in chairing the WLF and sending the letter to Infantino, believes he is acting on behalf of the Premier League and doing what is best for its clubs.

The Premier League does not, however, have an issue with select clubs being rewarded for their success via the CWC; they simply believe it should come in a way that does not jeopardise the domestic competition.

The same argument, via the WLF, is being made on behalf of 43 other leagues from a variety of countries, including those in Spain, Italy, France, Qatar, Australia, Saudi Arabia, and the United States.

The ‘foreign fans can’t be ignored’ problem

Football is a game that happens to exist outside of Europe, right?

That is a view taken by FIFA and they believe it is their job to grow the game on a global level, which is part of their thinking by revamping the Club World Cup.

The Premier League is the most successful and most-watched football league in the world and it has a significant global reach. It is why its clubs regularly travel to the U.S. and Asia on pre-season tours. There is an opportunity to cash in.

But why should the supporters in the U.S., for example, have to put up with being treated to a match between Manchester United’s reserves and Wrexham? There is no doubt FIFA’s revamped tournament — competitive games between the best sides in the world — will be warmly received by fans in America.

U.S. fans want to see their teams play competitive games (Tim Warner/Getty Images)

Clubs are more than happy to take their overseas fans’ cash, so it can’t always be on their terms.

The Premier League has previously floated the idea of playing a ’39th game’ abroad, while the Spanish Supercopa has been moved to Saudi Arabia. There is regular speculation about a Champions League final being played in the U.S., so the concept of a club going abroad to play in a competition, be it a pre-season tournament or something more official, is not a new one.

“If they weren’t going to the Club World Cup, then the clubs would be flying their players somewhere else to fill commercial needs,” says Walsh.

The ‘engaging the U.S. market’ problem

For years, Americans have shown — with their wallets — a strong interest in watching top global soccer powers in the U.S.

Last year’s Premier League summer tour averaged 44,147 fans per game for contests featuring just one ‘Big Six’ club, Chelsea. Those numbers were especially strong considering competition from MLS and Liga MX’s Leagues Cup, boosted by Lionel Messi’s arrival in the U.S., as well as the Soccer Champions Tour, another round of pre-season friendlies featuring the likes of Barcelona, Juventus, Real Madrid, AC Milan, Manchester United and Arsenal. Those games averaged 58,871 fans across seven games.

Americans have latched on to global soccer, filling bars around the country to watch the Premier League and tuning into the Champions League and other European leagues at ever-increasing numbers. The growing number of American players in Europe has only aided that interest.

Now, for the first time, the CWC will give American audiences the chance to watch their favourite clubs play games with actual stakes. The bet is that fans will flock to these games.

It’s an idea the companies who have organised pre-season tours have been fighting for in U.S. courts. In 2019, Relevent Sports filed a lawsuit against U.S. Soccer and FIFA claiming the organisations conspired to prohibit competitive league games from leagues outside the U.S., including Spain and Ecuador, a violation of American antitrust law.

A federal judge in 2021 dismissed Relevent’s suit, but the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that in March and ruled the case could be heard. The case has now reached the highest levels of U.S. government. U.S. Soccer appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and, last month, the Supreme Court asked President Joe Biden’s administration for its views on whether it should take up U.S. Soccer’s appeal to bar Relevent’s lawsuit.

Should Relevent win that lawsuit, American soccer leagues, namely Major League Soccer, could face competition from global leagues looking to capture the massive American commercial market with games staged in the U.S.

From MLS’s standpoint, the CWC also provides an important opportunity — or test.

MLS stakeholders believe that one way the league can capture more fans is by competing favourably against regional rivals. That outlook led to changes in roster rules from 2015-18 in order to perform better against Liga MX foes in the CONCACAF Champions Cup. It also set the stage for MLS to create the Leagues Cup.

Seattle Sounders have qualified for the 2025 Club World Cup (Steph Chambers/Getty Images)

Just one MLS team, the Seattle Sounders, has qualified for 2025’s Club World Cup. MLS will have a chance to qualify a second team in the 2024 CONCACAF Champions Cup (Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami will be competing in that and so will have a chance to take part in the CWC should they win it). One team will also qualify as the host country.

The performance of those MLS teams in this tournament could go a long way toward selling a narrative to casual sports fans in the U.S. that MLS is getting closer in quality to leagues around the world. If Seattle (or another MLS team) struggles in the tournament, however, it could have the opposite effect.

(Top photo: Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images)

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The Club World Cup 2025 in the U.S. the big issues analysed