News: 2025 FIFA Club World Cup: General [Multiple Rs]

The Nations League is a bit of a red herring as it uses the FIFA mandated international windows. If it didn't exist countries would still be playing friendlies. It may encourage the playing of slightly stronger teams, but with limited contact times international managers would still be likely to be playing many of their best players.

 

Look, I love to watch soccer so I do experience the "the more, the better" feeling. This time of the year when all I could pay attention to, was market rumors, the CWC added 63 games to watch; I watched a good number of them and many were highly entertaining. The team I primarily support, AC Milan, didn't even make it, so I wasn't worried about injuries for our players, but I can see the players' standpoint. Even though the more games I watch, the more I'm entertained, I don't want to see top players getting injured or burned out.

We just had the tragedy of Theo Hernandez, one of our main players in past seasons, having a horrible season after coming back exhausted from too long a season including national team duties, which triggered a series of unfortunate events that resulted in a complete rupture between the club and Theo. He then asked to leave, and has just left. There were other issues like commitment, motivation, and professionalism and lack thereof; Theo was guilty of his own failures too. But it all started with his exhaustion.

Christian Pulisic has recently refused to play for the US Men's National Team at the Gold Cup because of exhaustion. This for me was somewhat of a relief because Puli in previous seasons used to come back from national team duty injured, exhausted, or off-form. Another player who got practically destroyed by serial injuries was Bennacer who usually came back injured from the African Cup of Nations. He's basically out of the first team too, was shipped out on loan, and upon his return he also asked to be sold. He used to be a great midfielder and now he is just average after a series of injuries.

Even though more games entertain me, I don't want my club to lose essential players due to injuries or burnout.

 

The friendlies were not as intense and had very experimental lineups though in many cases.
England would play like B and C teams in many cases. Still do like against Senegal.
Managers approach friendlies and official completions quite differently in the majority of cases.

 

That, they try to influence at the confederations and federations levels through their local unions. The international union if I understand correctly, is not a real union but is a loose congregation of the national ones. I just mentioned the case of FIFA, but like I made clear in other posts, I think FIFA, and the continental confederations, and the domestic federations, are all guilty of always pushing for more and more games.

 

They are all guilty. And they all have the right to make as much money as they want. There is no easy solution to this.

 

True, but the squads were still pretty strong and so those players are still training intensely in that window.

There were some experimental picks in the Senegal game, but at least 6-7 of the players involved could well start in the WC if England qualify and the CWC was in large part responsible for others being rested or not playing a full 90 minutes.

 

You think the FA and the clubs themselves would agree to that? I don't think they will.

 

The FA cup is most certainly FAR from meaningless in the UK, the top clubs will NOT want to be omitted from the worlds oldest cup competition. It's all very well if you're called Liverpool or Ajax or Bayern Munich then this competition might be relevant to you but if you are Crystal Palace then the biggest trophy last season WAS the FA Cup, if everybody in the Netherlands supported AJax and PSV Eindehoven then you'd get a much better chance of cancelling domestic Dutch competition but most Dutch supporters DONT support Ajax or PSV.

 

What about the ~98% of clubs that didn't play in the CWC?

Reducing top leagues from 20 to 18 teams (4 games per season) is more logically justified because of the recent expansion of the UCL & Europa by 4 matchdays per season. That seems like a balanced trade off. Not perfect, but reasonable.

 

FIFA boasting USD 2.1 billion in revenues, without telling us that USD 1 billion was donated by one national federation: KSA.

KSA must keep bankrolling CWC in 2029 and 2033 so that CWC is profitable. FIFA cannot afford to lose CWC subsidies from KSA.

UEFA is well aware that CWC will become unsustainable after KSA is done hosting 2034 WC.

 

I tell you what: better ask ARG and BRA leagues to cut down their teams, if such action is truly reasonable.

ARG league has 30 teams, while BRA has 20. Neither will choose to reduce their league size because their tournaments will either implode or turn into a joke.

In a regular season, BRA sends 14 teams to continental tournaments while 4 are relegated. Cut its league to 18 teams and all non-relegated teams will have an automatic continental spot.

Not a good idea.

 

Most fans in Argentina think the 30 team league is a joke and would gladly reduce back down to 20 as it was a fairly recent cynical ploy by AFA to expand in the first place.

 

Reducing premier leagues to 18 clubs - at least in a European context - makes sense because the less is more principle applies: each game carries more weight, is therefore more meaningful, and virtually every club will have an objective (title, UCL/UEL/UECL qualification, avoid relegation) until virtually the final game of each season.

This might be why FIFA is reportedly considering a biennial 48-team CWC, to make the event self-sustaining and more relevant whenever Saudi financial subsidy ends.

The 4-year interval between CWCs is detrimental because we all know club football is based on a seasonal rhythm.

 

If they went biennial I can see the argument for reducing the number of teams rather than increasing. The Champions only of AFC Caf and Concacaf (6 teams), UEFA and Conmebol finalists (8 teams), OFC (1), Hosts (1) making 16. If you want to go to 24 teams then 6 more UEFA and 2 more CONMEBOL based on some coefficient of performance decided by the respective confederations.

 

it migth already be unsustainable. initial plan was between 4 and 5 billion. they hardly covered all costs, thanks to KSA as you wrote

not sure if there will be another CWC. you can't play in summer in KSA and it would be very hard to persuade all leagues to pause for over a month for CWC without giving them something, and I do not see who would pay for that "something". only few selected clubs are getting profit from the CWC while leagues would be actually losing the money.

 

Well, the main KSA injection came via DAZN, although the PIF was also a direct sponsor. That said, Apple reportedly also offered about USD 1 billion for the streaming rights before those talks broke down.

I do think that now, after the first edition, it is visible to television/streaming firms and sponsors what is on offer and I would argue the competition is self-sustainable at about USD 2 billion.

 

Yes, reducing to 18 makes sense from that point of view but the problem is that it makes zero sense from a financial point of view. Fewer matches mean less TV revenue, less ticket revenue, 10% less of everything. It also means that some clubs will be one division lower than they would be under the current pyramid structure, which means a lot less money (way more than 10%) for those clubs.

Even big clubs that qualify for the Club WC probably don't make up that revenue loss through the CWC, and for the 99% of clubs that aren't involved in the CWC it is a straight loss.

 

Even without the CWC, the calendar is already unreasonably long for all the other teams. Yes, it would be good to decrease the domestic leagues to 18 clubs, and I don't see why the UCL and the Europa League needed to expand. When you include too many teams, you dilute the competition with boring, unbalanced games where you have a huge club playing against a crappy club that doesn't really belong in the UCL.

I actually liked more the previous UCL format with a group phase, than this new one. It is strange to have clubs qualify for the knockout phase while playing different games than their direct competitors instead of having a group where all four teams play the same games against each other. It introduces more randomness where certain teams may get very lucky in facing lesser teams, than others. Sure, it can happen when it's groups too, with certain groups being "groups of death" while others are easy, but at least, the system of pots for the draw tries to even this out. Nothing is perfect but I think the older format was good enough and there was no need to expand the UCL. It's again, just the confederation reaching for more games in order to generate more revenue, to the detriment of the competition and of the players.

It is ironic that UEFA expands their own competitions and then complains when FIFA expands theirs.

The bottom line is that, like I said, all three levels (FIFA, continental confederations, and domestic federations) just want more and more games to increase revenue, so the number of games just keeps increasing. When will it end? Will it continue to expand for all levels until clubs and players crack under pressure?

Clubs tried to get out of this insane system and implement their own Europe-wide league. As we know, UEFA and FIFA came down hard on the clubs and strongly punished them for trying to break free. That is, an attempt by the clubs to play fewer games and to have a non-diluted competition was frowned upon because it took power away from UEFA. Sure, there were other aspects of that super-league that were dubious, subverting the system of promotions and relegations, favoring the powerful clubs. Still, it is interesting to see how UEFA and FIFA will crush any attempts to take power, prestige, and money away from them. It's all a very corrupt and distorted environment.

 

The difference is though UEFA fully consulted the leagues and clubs when it re-formatted its club competitions, while FIFA acted unilaterally.

It's still quite modest compared to the USD5.1bn which the UEFA club competitions generate each season (2024-27 cycle) and that doesn't include the stadium ticket and hospitality sales which the home club keeps.

 

I don't think it's as simple as fewer games = less revenue particularly if the quality of the product improves.

 

I get what you're saying, but there is guarantee of losing money in the short term, and still a sizable risk of losing money in the longer term.

I mean, you can go to your boss and propose to work 34 hours per week instead of 38 hours and explain that you'll get just as much work done because you'll be more efficient. What do you think his/her response will be?