Man City win last CWC* ahead of 2025 edition set to break the mould *and* the players

A Manchester City became the World Champions* in Jeddah on Friday we couldn’t help but look forward to the next Club World Cup in 18 months time, by which point the asterisk may well no longer be required. The club that wins the tournament in the US could far more reasonably declare themselves as the best on the planet, but at what cost? Phil Foden may well have played 80 games in the season by the time he lifts the trophy.

A week that’s ended with Julian Alvarez wrapping up a comfortable 4-0 victory for Manchester City over Fluminese to win the last of the Club World Cups as we have known, and deplored, them, started with Fifa slipping a 32-team version, to start in 2025, under the radar, having failed to consult football federations, leagues, clubs, players or fans.

A22 and the European Super League’rs are small-time villains compared to Fifa, whose leader does what he wants, when he wants, with no thought for the people that actually matter.

Gianni Infantino treats football like a foie gras goose, fattening it to extract maximum value, to a point where it can no longer support its own weight, angering all but a select few who gorge on the yield and don’t give a damn about its welfare.

A devil’s advocate might ask why there shouldn’t be a global club tournament of significance? Domestic, Continental, Intercontinental is a logical progression. Why shouldn’t we know which football club is the best on the planet?

(Having won a real tournament, we mean, not the tinpot one Manchester City have just cruised to win. You don’t hear Chelsea fans singing ‘Champions of Earth, you’ll never sing that’, and you can bet your hat that they would if their 2022 Club World Cup win meant anything at all to them – the European iteration of the same ditty is one of their absolute favs).

And as Fluminese showed, the opportunity to watch club teams from other continents can be a hell of a lot of fun. Get yer da who shouts at Crystal Palace to ‘GET RID’ to watch these guys passing the ball around the six-yard box and watch his head explode.

The problem, for everyone but those making the money, isn’t the football itself but the volume of it. It’s conceivable that a Manchester City player – assuming they’ve not been relegated and dumped out of competitions by this point – could play 80 games in the 2024/25 season as a result of the revamped CWC, a ten per cent rise on the current upper limit.

European club managers may well treat it as an alternative to a pre-season tour, rotating senior players with academy prospects, but more teams and more coverage will bring added kudos, perhaps enough to make it a trophy worth counting in quintuple deliberations.

But the prospect of winning five worthy club competitions in a single season likely won’t be an appealing one for footballers, who are already spending more time on treatment tables than ever before, and are physically and mentally spent as things stand.

Though City didn’t appear to be too taxed on their way to victory on Friday night, the need for ‘cooling breaks’ in 30 degree heat as the players’ shirts clung to their bodies, combined with the the 8000-mile round trip, makes this a not insignificant jolly. And the CWC is just two games in its current guise, compared to seven in 2025.

Infantino’s plan is rooted in jealousy of Uefa, and the Champions League, which increases its stranglehold as the world’s pre-eminent club competition season after season, generating wealth to widen the gap between European clubs and all others. The likes of Fluminese, Al Ahly or Urawa Reds may think that unfair, and they’re not necessarily wrong, but infantile though this sounds, it’s not the fault of teams in Europe that their product is so successful.

“The positive impact this will have on clubs is going to be huge,” said Fifa’s chief of global football development Arsene Wenger, who spent the vast majority of his time in charge of Arsenal deploring the effect of too much football on his players.

Presumably hired as a bridge between the suits and the foot soldiers, Wenger no longer gives a damn about the boots on the ground, with player welfare insignificant to the money being palmed his way.

He talked about “making football really global” and “creating a chance for other clubs to progress”. And while it’s entirely reasonable, and commendable, to attempt to bring clubs of other continents up to the level of those in Europe, that won’t happen without the European teams.

A Club World Cup won’t be half as appealing, and thus marketable, without the leading sides from England, Spain, Italy, France and Germany, none of whom were consulted about, or appear to want, the competition. The players of those clubs shouldn’t be expected to break their bodies in a bid to raise the hopes and prospects of others.

Jamie Carragher urged the European teams, whose players are “treated like cattle”, to “boycott” the Club World Cup in 2025. But to abstain would be to throw £50m (the carrot for the tournament) down the drain, and while the managers and players may want to stay at home or go on holiday, money will always talk for the owners of these clubs, who will pack their crocked assets on a plane with medical staff and enough numbing injections to paralyse a herd of actual livestock in order to collect their appearance fee.

It will also come at a cost for the fans, who don’t have to attend the CWC, but probably didn’t account for 29 days on the East Coast of the United States in their commitment to follow their club over land and sea.

There will have been little more than handful of football fans in Europe, outside the Manchester City faithful, watching this game in Jeddah, with the Premier League offering of Aston Villa and Sheffield United later in the evening set to draw far more eyes from people keen to get their festive feast of football underway.

Many more of those same fans would tune in to a 32-team Club World Cup, not least because 11 more European sides will be involved. And while Fifa may argue that they are supplying football to meet demand, footballers aren’t mere commodities we can roll out on to the pitch for the enjoyment of the masses whenever it suits us.

By Fifa’s own admission ‘the protection of player health and well-being is of primary importance in football’s present and future’. But the Club World Cup in 2025 is a clear indication that player welfare is way down a list of priorities topped by the generation of wealth for the few, at the cost of those they rely on to create it.