What's a better way to give Europe 2 CWC berths without including runnerup or EL?

Nope, still doesn't make sense. Find another way that doesn't involve ruining the world's most popular club competition.

Its a separate entity. Just like the 2018 World Cup is separate from the 2019 AFC Cup, the UEFA CL can be separate from the CWC. What's so difficult to understand?

It may be possible to improve the CWC, but the UCL won't be changing to accommodate that improvement. Just like there are ways to improve the World Cup, without disturbing the European Championship.

 

The WCC and its predecessors has always been classed by Europeans as a needless exhibition competition.
A drain on resources to benefit your true opponents in already the most physically demanding seasons by going half way around the World to play weaker opposition for the title of pretend best club team in the World.

Its something that only benefits those outside of Europe and for very good reason and why they think it is important because it gives them the chance to try and claim themselves as good as the far superior Euro heavy weights, a fake title.

 

I disagree. Clubs should not be excluded from the hypothetical chance at being the top club in the world because of the countries they are in. A player from a club not in UEFA could have one of his biggest accomplishments be scoring against the UEFA champions in the CWC even if it was in a 5-1 loss.

 

I really like the CWC, but the current format is fine. But you don't change the UEFA Champions League to two sections, or change it any other way, because of CWC qualification concerns.

Also, CWC should never be in a country with a top 5 league, those fans already get to see the top players in the world. Perhaps, though, a second tier league European country would be a fun host one year, like Greece or Turkey or the Denmark. In general, I'd like to see more imaginative cities/regions as hosts- Miami, Florida in the USA; or Mexico City, or the world cup stadiums in South Africa or Brazil. Stuff like that, and make the tickets cheap so people go and the TV product is attractive. Japan and Middle East OK too, but not every year.

 

No offence but I find your whole premise to be confoundingly stupid tbh. You want to break up a great competition and deny the European clubs the chance to crown a best club in Europe just so that you can have one more "undefeated" team to send to the CWC?

No amount of marketing could make a 7 (or 9) team CWC become a better or more prestigious competition than the current CL. It's not about giving up, it is about accepting that without some truly revolutionising changes to both competitions the conditions just doesn't exist to make it happen. And as you reject wholesale changes to the CWC then I don't se your goal ever being reached.

That really isn't the problem. And it really isn't the climax, nothing close to it even.

This is the problem. The Final Four is more prestigious than the Elite Eight because it is composed of the the 4 best teams of the Elite Eight (and the previous steps). The CWC on the other hand is composed of the best team in Europe and South America and 5 teams that wouldn't get into the top 100 on either continent. Winning the Oceania CL does not give you the prestige or competitiveness to take on the best team in Europe, at least not in any way that will make anyone take that match seriously.

And this is the point where your argument falls on its face. Since the current format of the CWC was introduced in 2005 no non-CONMEBOL team has managed to beat the CL champion. You could send pretty much any of the 32 CL group stage teams and that statistic would still be unlikely to change. That lack of competitiveness from the non-CONMEBOL teams means that no one (certainly not anyone European) will take the CWC seriously.
You can call it the "World Final" all you want but the simple truth is that most Europeans watches better/more competitive teams every weekend in their national leagues and that's before we look at weekdays in the CL/EL.

Correct, the European Championships isn't the qualifiers for the WC, they act as qualifiers for the Confed Cup. And this just helps show where your argument struggles.

The CWC isn't the club version of the World Cup, it is the club version of the Confederations Cup. And the Confed Cup isn't a better or more prestigious competition than the Euro or the Copa America or Gold Cup or any of the other federations competitions in just the same way that the CWC isn't a bigger or better competition than the CL or Libertadores.
In the end both the Confed cup and the CWC are much more of a exhibition and PR exercise than an actual prestigious competition (at least to Europeans and South Americans). This might possibly change in the future but it is a long way away and would require a lot of changes in world football to ever come true.

 

Pretty much spot on. I do like the idea of a CWC though. I think you can only claim to be an authentic World Champion if you have come out on top of a competition that pretty much includes the whole world.

One problem is that with each year, Europe gets further and further away from the rest of the world, often making the competition moot (regardless of its flawed format).

Changing the CL is crazy and there's no rhyme or reason for UEFA to do so; however what about changing the way teams qualify for the CWC?

Rather than using the continental comps, how about something like using the champions of the top ranked leagues in each confed (or some similar idea -just thinking aloud, shoot me down if I'm spouting nonsense)?

Each confederation has its own league ranking anyway to determine how many slots each league gets. The same system could be used to determine which champions go to a CWC.

We could have a 16 team competition with:
UEFA: 5
CONMEBOL: 4
CAF: 2
AFC: 2
CONCACAF: 2
Oceania: 1

 

I don't like that because than only a fraction of countries / teams around the world would be eligible to win the CWC. IOW, it wouldn't be a true club *world* cup anymore than the UEFA CL isn't a club world cup.

 

First, I don't think any change is necessary (more below), but...

If you were to say - confederations champs + a number of league champs (so, UEFA Champs winner + Winners of Spain, England, Italy, Germany + France if space) then I would say this isn't the worst idea I've seen, and probably the only one that isn't offensive. You would need to ensure that the other confeds (other than UEFA who already do so) had a sensible and fair way of ranking their confeds so that there would be fair competition for the other spot - but if you did that then ... yeah, okay, not so bad.

This is actually the main argument against any expansion of the CWC. Because Europe is getting so far ahead, any expanded tournament risks becoming a "do over" of the UCL semifinals and final. Which would make it rather pointless.

I don't think the CWC is really "big" enough to expand - it is a quick, glorified exhibition thing that lets us have a World Club Champ without having to waste any more time than required getting it done.

And it's not that it doesn't matter. I'm sure the OFC, AFC and CAF (and maybe even Concacaf) teams are very excited to qualify and get a good chance of a game against massive opposition. Maybe even the Conmebol team (given the final is now just before the CWC, so it naturally follows on).

However, I am sure no-one at the Uefa winner (apart from the person who books their travel, and maybe the accountant) is thinking about the CWC when they lift the UCL trophy.

J

 

Its all a futile exercise IMO. Its like expanding the Confederations Cup to include the 2 finalists from each major tournament rather than only the winner, and then expecting it to become super popular as a result. Not gonna help at all.