The FIFA Club World Cup began in 2000 and was designed to find out which was the best football team on the planet.
Whilst supporters of clubs who are extremely unlikely to ever qualify for it might like to do it down, those whose teams get to play in it have always understood its value.
The winners of the various tournaments from the governing bodies that are part of FIFA, such as UEFA’s Champions League and the CAF Champions League, went head-to-head.
Now it’s all change, so what will it look like and will it succeed?
The Decision to Expand
Towards the end of 2016, the then-President of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, suggested that it would be a good idea to expand the Club World Cup to 32 teams. His plan was to see the expansion take place from 2019, moving the competition to June in order to make it more appealing to broadcasters and sponsors.
The following year, conversations took place around a possible expansion, with the number of teams taking part having dropped down to 24, taking place every four years instead of yearly as it had been up until that point.
The hope was that the new Club World Cup could replace the FIFA Confederations Cup, which was a men’s national team competition that had first taken place in 1992. The notion was that the Club World Cup would take place in the non-UEFA European Championship and non-World Cup years, beginning in 2021 in China.
In the end, the world health crisis that began in 2019 and ended up shutting down the sport around the world meant that the 2021 launch couldn’t take place, so it was delayed until 2025, with the teams taking part increased once more to 32.
What is the New Format?
The new version of the competition has seen the FIFA Council approve slot allocation to teams based on a ‘set of objective metrics and criteria’. UEFA was given 12 slots, which is the most, whilst CONMEBOL received six. Each of the AFC, CAF, and CONCACAF was given four apiece, whilst one slot was also given to the OFC and the host association.
How the slots are then filled depends on each confederation, with the CONMEBOL and UEFA slots being given to the winners of the top competition for the previous four years.
I tried my best to sum up what the hell is going on with Fifa and a suddenly-open spot in the Club World Cup, which could now theoretically be filled by León, Club América, LAFC, or maybe, just maybe, Alajuelense – the reason we’re having this convo at all.
www.theguardian.com/football/202…
— Alexander Abnos (@anabnos.com) 31 March 2025 at 05:21
Additional teams are also allocated according to the ranking of the club over a four-year period. When it comes to AFC, CAF, and CONCACAF, the four slots are awarded to the four previous winners of the highest club competition, whilst the OFC slot goes to the highest-ranked club from the winners of the OFC Champions League over the previous four years.
The host country slot will depend on numerous different criteria decided closer to the time. Additional teams can be added in cases where a club has won the top competition more than once across the four-year period in question.
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Once the teams are decided, they are then assigned pots according to FIFA’s ranking system and are drawn out of the pots to decide which group each team will go into. The competition gets underway with a group stage, with the top two teams advancing to the knockout stage.
This will see 16 teams progress, playing each other in order to make it into the quarter-finals, then the semi-finals, and eventually the final. The winner of that last game is declared to be the overall winner and will be considered, by some at least, to be the best club side on the planet at the time.
Why Some People Hate It
It is fair to say that more than a few people in the football world are not big fans of the new Club World Cup. As soon as FIFA’s plans were announced, for example, both the International Federation of Professional Footballers and the World Leagues Forum were quick to criticise them, pointing to the fact that players are already playing far too much football.
Similar criticisms were levelled by supporters, with many feeling that a new major football tournament that is essentially an expansion of something considered to be a friendly was unnecessary.
Some players could play a Champions League final on the 31st May, Nations League Semi-Final 4th/5th June, Final 8th June, then the Club World Cup starts June 15th 😂 What an insane schedule…
— MadridistaTV (@madridistatvYT) March 23, 2025
For their part, FIFA doesn’t seem to care. Instead, they have decided to throw a huge amount of money at the Club World Cup, knowing that by doing so they are making sure that the teams who take part will take it seriously.
The problem that they face is that there is a reluctance from some sponsors to get on board with the Club World Cup, whilst interest in it seems to be low at best. It is entirely possible that it is a huge success, but the likelihood is that FIFA will look to reconsider how it looks before the 2029 iteration comes around.
