The never-ending season #2: Is FIFA waiting for Saudi Arabia to unlock the Club World Cup’s potential?
A revamped 32-team FIFA Club World Cup will be played for the first time next year. But who will fund it? Which venues will host it? Will it be on TV? It's all up in the air
There’s a page on FIFA’s website dedicated to the new, expanded Club World Cup (CWC) which is due to be staged in the USA next summer. The “landing page” for the event carries the headline “FIFA World Cup Cup 2025: Everything you need to know”.
But it’s what we don’t know - what FIFA is not yet able to tell fans, or even the participating clubs - that is most interesting. For example, it hasn’t been confirmed, with only nine months to go:
Which venues are being used to stage the games, or even how many there will be.
What the prize money will be, or how it will be funded.
How much tickets will cost, or when they will go on sale.
The date or location of the draw for the 32-team event.
Which broadcasters, if any, will be showing the event in different territories around the world.
Which sponsors will be helping to fund the event, if any, and whether it will turn out to be economic success or failure for Fifa.
What we do know is the shape of the logo for the event (below), revealed on 4 September, and that the “audio signature” for the CWC will be Gala’s Freed from Desire. As for the big issues, not so much.
For some clubs, the CWC is likely to be one event too many, stretching players more than ever. The emphasis in the previous sentence should be on some.
A fascinating piece of research by the CIES Observatory this summer (PDF below) considered the workloads of between 18,000 and 21,000 professional footballers per season across 40 leagues in each of the past dozen years.
In the 12 years analysed those players played an average of 22.7 matches per season, and while there is an uptick in the number of matches per club, the average minutes per player have remained stable “mainly due to the introduction of the five substitutions rule and squad size increase.”
However, a small number of players, or 0.31%, played 61 or more matches per season, and another 1.8% played 51 to 60 matches, and another 6.8% played 41 to 50 matches per season.
Upshot: about 1,800 players are appearing in five to seven matches a month, every month of the season. Many players are not ailing via an overloaded football calendar. But some are, and various football folk have been vocal about it. Manchester City’s Rodri has even claimed players are close to going on strike over their excessive workloads.
As explored in part one of this “Never-ending season” series, UEFA’s new-look 36-team Champions League starts this week. Liverpool won 3-1 at Milan last night (Tuesday) as Aston Villa beat Young Boys 3-0 away. Those results put Villa and Liverpool second and third in the very first 36-team Champions League table after its opening night.
Manchester City are at home to Internazionale tonight as Celtic host Dortmund; and Arsenal are at Atalanta tomorrow. That first article detailed how new football seasons now routinely start before the previous one has finished.
It’s possible the players at some of the biggest clubs will theoretically only have a few weeks off in total between now and the end of the 2026 men’s World Cup.
This comes at a time when many clubs are happy to increase their stars’ workload as long as there is a big enough payday.
But as the clubs due to compete in the 2025 CWC don’t yet know what’s on offer, or whether that will outstrip what they could earn playing lucrative friendlies next summer instead, there must be doubts over the quality of the squads some might send to the CWC. Will it be B-teams for some participants?
Today’s piece will explore what we do know, and according to various sources, what the answers might be to things above we don’t know, yet.
Part three of this series will delve into the possibility of player burnout for those players perpetually involved at the highest level for their clubs and countries across multiple competitions. I’ll also explore what player unions are doing to try to address concerns that there is simply too much football.
Who will play in the 2025 CWC?
It will involve 32 teams from across the full array of FIFA confederations: AFC, CAF, UEFA, OFC, CONCACAF and CONMEBOL. All but two of those 32 are known.
They will be split into eight groups of four and play a tournament that will run like the previous 32-team men’s World Cups. There will be a group stage of three games per team, then a knockout phase comprised of last-16 ties, quarter-finals, semi-finals and the final.
The new CWC will be played between 15 June and 13 July next year, although no venues have been confirmed. We’ll return to that.
It will clash with the CONCACAF Gold Cup (the north American and Caribbean international men’s tournament, equivalent of the Euros) which will also take place in the USA at the same time (14 June to 6 July). It isn’t known how players who might feature in both events will decide which one to play in.
Three Mexican teams will take part in the CWC for example, at a time Mexico will likely be contesting the Gold Cup, possibly using players from those teams.
There are other potential complications: the summer transfer window will be open and theoretically a player could be transferred from one competing CWC team to another during the tournament. But they can only play for one team.
Another major football event happening for part of the CWC is the 2025 Women’s Euros, to be staged in Switzerland from 2 to 27 July. Thus Fifa, with their new month-long CWC will be vying for attention with UEFA (women’s Euros) and CONCACAF (the Gold Cup).
The 30 confirmed clubs of the 32 who will play in the 2025 CWC are detailed below and you can read about their various qualifying routes here.
Asia (4 AFC clubs)
Al Hilal (from Saudi Arabia); Urawa Red Diamonds (Japan); Al Ain (UAE) and Ulsan HD (Korea).
Africa (4 CAF clubs)
Al Ahly (Egypt), Wydad (Morocco), ES Tunis (Tunisia) and Mamelodi Sundowns (South Africa).
Europe (12 UEFA clubs)
Chelsea (England), Real Madrid (Spain), Manchester City (England), Bayern Munich (Germany), Paris Saint-Germain (France), Internazionale (Italy), Porto (Portugal), Benfica (Portugal), Borussia Dortmund (Germany), Juventus (Italy), Atletico Madrid (Spain) and FC Salzburg (Austria).
Oceana (1 OFC club)
Auckland City (New Zealand).
N America & the Caribbean (5 CONCACAF clubs)
Monterrey (Mexico), Seattle Sounders (USA), Club Leon (Mexico), Pachuca (Mexico), plus one other: the “best” MLS team, TBC.
South America (6 CONMEBOL clubs)
Palmeiras (Brazil), Flamengo (Brazil), Fluminense (Brazil), River Plate (Argentina), Boca Juniors (Argentina), plus one other: the winner of the 2024 Copa Libertadores.
How did the new CWC come about?
As long ago as 2018, Fifa president Gianni Infantino envisioned an expanded CWC, and there was an offer on the table from the Japanese investment giant SoftBank, backed by Saudi and Chinese government, to pay $25bn to fund three editions of a revamped CWC. A contemporary report about that is here.
It didn’t happen but another version of the same thing - with no funding in place - was agreed in 2019 to start in 2021. But the Pandemic happened so here we are with the first new-look CWC happening in 2025.
Infantino has always maintained that the new version of the CWC will allow clubs from smaller markets to compete alongside the giants of Europe, who are collectively the richest clubs in the world.
“Clubs play a fundamental role in world football, and the tournament [the CWC] in 2025 will be a major milestone in providing clubs from all confederations with a fitting stage on which to shine at the highest level of the game,” he said.
Will it help small clubs, and be competitively balanced?
There have been some hearty endorsements for the competition from a number of clubs and players who will compete, in a piece on Fifa’s website. It’s notable that they have largely come from “smaller” clubs, such as Ulsan in Korea, the Mamelodi Sundowns in South Africa and from Auckland City in New Zealand, as opposed to figureheads at Real Madrid or other European giants.
But doubtless, it will mean a lot, in terms of reputation as well as financially, to many of the clubs. As the Seattle Sounders midfielder Cristian Roldan says: “The guys are excited and know that we are going to compete against the best clubs in the world.
“We watch the UEFA Champions League in the locker room every Tuesday and Wednesday that it’s on, so yes, there is a buzz within our team watching the big teams play. To have a chance to compete at that level is something that we’ve always dreamed of. I think our team is really excited for the opportunity.”
As for whether there will be competitive balance at the CWC, the short answer is there remains a strong chance that quite a lot of the non-European teams will get steamrollered, as the graphic below indicates.