The Club World Cup is finally upon us. This week has been about two years in the making, ever since this expanded format was officially announced in 2023 and we learned that the Seattle Sounders would be participating.
Oddly, I’m not sure it comes with as much excitement as we all figured it would. There are a lot of reasons for that and also a lot of education still left to do. In fact, that’s what this column is for. Let’s dig in:
Let’s start with the basics. What is this?
This is supposed to be the first of what will eventually become a quadrennial tournament that features 32 of the best club teams from around the world playing in a month-long tournament. Which, yes, as the name implies, is basically a club version of the much more famous FIFA World Cup.
Had this not existed before?
Well, that’s part of the problem, I’d argue. Yes, the Club World Cup has technically existed since 2000 and has been contested 20 times prior to this year. In fact, the Sounders even played in the 2022 edition (which actually took place in 2023, but let’s stay focused).
Those previous tournaments featured just seven teams — each of the six most recent confederation winners, plus another representative from the host country — and took place over the course of about 10 days. The winners — always from Europe or South America — only needed to play two games and usually walked away with a prize of around $5 million.
When did they change that?
In 2016, FIFA President Gianni Infantino first floated the idea of an expanded Club World Cup that would be played every four years and effectively replace the FIFA Confederations Cup — a tournament that featured the national team champions of each federation and effectively worked as a dry-run for the upcoming World Cup.
A year later, FIFA approved the plan, which was supposed to feature 24 teams with the first one planned for 2021 and to be played in China. But then the Covid-19 pandemic happened and those plans were delayed.
They came roaring back to life in 2022 when FIFA announced that not only would the tournament be played in 2025, but it would be expanded to 32 teams and feature eight four-team groups, for a total of 63 matches. A few months later, it was announced that the tournament would be played in the United States, with Lumen Field selected as one of the 12 host venues.
Who’s playing?
As promised, the tournament features winners from all six confederations, as well as many of the biggest and best clubs in the world.
- Europe leads the way with 12 representatives: Chelsea, Real Madrid, Manchester City, Bayern Munich, PSG, Inter, Porto, Benfica, Borussia Dortmund, Juventus, Atletico Madrid and Red Bull Salzburg
- There are six teams from South America: Palmeiras, Fluminense, Flamengo, Botafogo, River Plate and Boca Juniors
- Five teams from Concacaf (which got an extra spot as the host): Monterrey, Seattle Sounders, Los Angeles FC, Pachuca and Inter Miami
- Four teams from Asia: Al Hilal, Urawa Red Diamonds, Al Ain, Ulsan HD
- Four teams from Africa: Al Ahly, Wydad Casablanca, Esperance de Tunis, Mamelodi Sundowns
- One from Oceania: Auckland City
Is there a handy bracket where I can see all this stuff?
Here you go:
How did teams qualify?
Without getting into each team’s specific qualification, it was a mix of a few different methods. Exactly half of the teams qualified by winning their respective confederation’s championship starting with the 2020-21 season and going through the 2023-24 season. There were 14 other teams who qualified through various ranking-based methods, but limited to no more than two teams from the same country who didn’t win their way in. That’s how Liverpool — who were the top-ranked team — missed out and how Red Bull Salzburg got in as the ninth-ranked team, for instance.
That left two more spots. One of them was given to Inter Miami as the representative of the host nation. There was some hemming and hawing from FIFA how they were going to determine that, but once Miami won the Supporters’ Shield last year they were given the spot.
The final spot was originally going to Liga MX’s Club Léon, who won the 2023 Concacaf Champions League, and they had even been included in the original tournament draw. But earlier this year, FIFA decided to enforce a rule that banned two clubs owned by the same group from both playing in the tournament. With Club Léon sharing an ownership group with Pachuca, it was Léon who drew the short straw. (Best I can tell, no official explanation has been given why Pachuca got in over Léon.)
Eventually, FIFA decided to pit LAFC against Club America in a one-game playoff for that spot in the tournament. That game was played less than two weeks ago, with LAFC scoring a thrilling 2-1 extra-time win at BMO Stadium in Los Angeles.
How much money is at stake?
The total prize pool is $1 billion, with roughly half of it guaranteed for simply qualifying and the other half based on each team’s performance. Depending on which league they play in, there’s a sliding scale for how much each team is guaranteed.
The biggest European clubs get about $40 million for showing up, while semi-pro Auckland City is getting about $3.5 million. The Sounders, like the rest of the teams from Concacaf, Asia and Africa, will get $9.55 million guaranteed.
Each team gets the same performance bonuses, though. Tying a group stage game is worth $1 million, winning a group stage game earns $2 million, getting out of the group stage is a $7.5 million prize, and there’s tens of millions more for each round teams advance to after that.
The winner will likely collect about $125 million in total, which is basically equivalent to the UEFA Champions League.
What’s the trophy look like?
If you’re a “details person” this is the trophy for you. It has so much going on, from the names of every team competing to the complete text of the Laws of the Game. Oh, and it spins and has a key!
How seriously will teams take this?
Given the prize money, I suspect team management is very interested in doing well. But it’s not quite that straightforward, mainly because the world does not play soccer on a unified calendar.
PSG and Inter Milan, for instance, just played the Champions League final a couple of weeks ago and you would think their best players would like a break. Most European teams start their preseason tours right around the time this tournament ends, and Argentina starts their Clausura around the same time. The Brazilian teams, meanwhile, are basically in midseason.
One thing that might tip the scales is how players are being compensated.
How are players being incentivized?
That’s been a big bone of contention, at least around here, for the past few weeks. One of the only teams to formally announce how much they’re paying the players is Real Madrid, who said everyone will get a $1 million bonus if they win the whole thing.
MLS, which is governed by a Collective Bargaining Agreement that was signed in 2021, is only mandated to give each team’s players $1 million to share. They’ve since offered to give them 20% of any performance bonuses on top of that.
The players believe they deserve more – maybe a lot more. They rejected the league’s offer and as of today there’s still no new agreement. You can read more about it here.
Suffice it to say, there’s a pretty basic logic that suggests paying players to do well is a seemingly virtuous cycle, especially in a tournament like this.
Where is that money coming from?
As you may have heard, FIFA spent the better part of the last two years trying to talk various broadcasters into paying them $1 billion for the broadcast rights. AppleTV was the early favorite but walked away. Presumably ESPN, Paramount, NBC and every other broadcaster weighed it over and declined, too.
Finally, a channel you likely have never watched called DAZN met that $1 billion valuation and agreed to stream every game for free. Later it was announced that select games would be broadcast in English on TNT and in Spanish on various Univision channels.
DAZN doesn’t have a huge presence in the United States, but is pretty big in other parts of the world and is apparently hoping to use this tournament to break into the market here.
While there are other forms of income being generated from things like sponsorship and ticket sales, this is easily the single-biggest chunk of money that FIFA got and is the main reason they think they can pull this off at a profit.
Are fans pretty excited?
I would say it’s generous to call the interest “mixed.” While I think it’s possible that fans will get more excited as the tournament gets on and the reality sets in of watching some of the best clubs in the world play matches with real stakes, right now tickets sales are pretty awful.
Over the past few weeks, FIFA has been reducing prices consistently, offering deep discounts for the opener between Leo Messi’s Inter Miami and Egypt’s Al Ahly and even giving away free tickets to the Sounders-Botafogo match. Many of the games have tens of thousands of available tickets, in large part because FIFA originally priced these like high-demand games despite there being virtually no buzz about this tournament.
Why is this happening?
Money is the obvious — and frankly correct — answer. But how cynical of a ploy it is depends on your perspective. Essentially, this is FIFA’s attempt to horn in on the market that UEFA effectively owns now. There is no disputing that the UEFA Champions League winner is the de facto “best team in the world” and its final is watched by even more global viewers on an annual basis than the Super Bowl. In fact, the only event that is bigger is the World Cup.
But that’s really FIFA’s only big money maker, and if they’re going to remain the dominant force in world football, they figure they need to also have the biggest club tournament. The Club World Cup is their attempt to grab that market.
Without getting too deep down that rabbit hole, though, I’ll just suggest you read this excellent piece by Yahoo!’s Henry Bushnell.
How will the Sounders do?
The Sounders are in what most seem to agree is the toughest group in the whole tournament. They’ll open against the reigning Copa Libertadores champions, Botafogo, on Sunday. After that, they’ll play Atletico Madrid on June 19, an opponent who finished third in Spain’s La Liga and was fifth best in the 36-team Group Phase of the UEFA Champions League. The Sounders will close out against PSG, who just won the Champions League final 5-0 to cap off a treble that included winning France’s Ligue 1 and the Coupe de France.
Frankly, a realistic goal should be for the Sounders to just stay competitive in each game. Getting a single point would be a huge accomplishment, getting a win would be a massive upset, and getting out of the group would be arguably more impressive than winning the 2022 CCL.
Isn’t that a little disrespectful?
You could look at that way, but Obed Vargas was asked that exact question and this is what he said: “Yeah but I can’t fault them for it. It’s clear, there are different levels to the game. But we take this as an opportunity to prove those people wrong, to compete, to prove it to ourselves more than anyone else.
“I think if you ask the players, they’re not nervous. They’re happy, they’re excited. This might be the only opportunity to play these teams in Seattle, in our stadium, in our home. We’re going to have fun. It’s a game, it’s an unbelievable moment for us. That’s how we’re trying to look at it.”
Who else is playing in Seattle?
There are a total of six games scheduled to be played at Lumen Field. In addition to the three Sounders games, there are three teams from Group E who will play two games apiece here. Japan’s Urawa Reds face Argentina’s River Plate on June 17; UEFA Champions League finalist Inter Milan play Urawa on June 21; and Inter Milan play River Plate on June 25. Monterrey is the fourth team in that group, but play all their games at Pasadena’s Rose Bowl.
Are tickets still available for those games?
Oh my god, yes. There are so many tickets available and some of them are actually pretty cheap.
Any cool tech getting debuted?
As it turns out, there will be a few “innovations” on display during the tournament:
- The most interesting one is that fans inside the stadium will now get to see exactly what the referees are looking at when they use VAR, with the footage being played on the big screens.
- Referees will also be wearing bodycams and the footage is going to be incorporated into broadcasts.
- They are unveiling something called “Advanced semi-automated offside technology” which is going to take multiple camera angles, a sensor inside the ball and artificial intelligence that combines to give even more data to VAR, but with a real person making the final determination.
- Finally substitutions will be handled digitally on tablets as opposed to the physical cards that had to be handed over manually.
- It's not a tech related, but FIFA has promised to seriously enforce the 8-second rule for goalkeepers. As soon as a goalkeeper has possession, referees will start visibly counting down and if they get to zero a corner kick will be awarded to the other team.
Will this be fun?
Despite everything I said, I still think there’s a lot of potential for this to be a fun tournament, especially for Seattle soccer fans. Six super interesting teams are going to be coming to our town along with a sizable chunk of their fans. I know I’m looking forward to watching them play, even if the stadiums aren’t packed. That we can now get good tickets for reasonable prices only makes it more intriguing to me.
Once the tournament moves into the knockout phase, I also think there’s some real potential for teams to turn up the intensity and play some compelling games. I’m skeptical this tournament will ever be able to compete with the UEFA Champions League and it’s hard to see how it ever becomes a true club equivalent to the World Cup, but it doesn’t have to be either of those things to be worth watching, either.
