Money talks, players suffer at the Club World Cup

There’s no shortage of star appeal, but what good can come of a tournament that will take players to the brink?

- By Dom Smith

Today, you have in front of you a happy Fifa president," Gianni Infantino grinned, as he addressed a pack of reporters in Miami in March 2019. "I am particularly happy - not for me, but for world football." When he spoke more than six years ago, Infantino was unveiling what he believes will prove a gamechanger in club football: an expanded Club World Cup to be held not annually but every four years.

On Saturday, the inaugural edition of the expanded tournament finally kicks off, with FIFA hoping it’s a case of better late than never after the 2021 version in China was canned amid a backlog of sporting events postponed by Covid-19.

Infantino promised an “inclusive competition” and FIFA has not failed to deliver on that front, for what could be more inclusive than doing away with the old seven-team format in favour of, originally, 24 and, in the end, 32 teams?

The United States, a year out from co-hosting the first-ever 48-team World Cup, welcomes 32 clubs from 20 countries across six continents over the next month, testing that ageless American mantra that “bigger is better”. FIFA hope that holding it once every four years will grow its grandeur to match that of a major tournament. If nothing else, its $1billion (£739m) prize money is an easy sell to those involved.

However lucrative the riches at stake, there is a sense here of football eating itself. Conversations about player welfare and burnout simmer away while the game’s governing bodies continue to cook up new competitions, expand old ones, and pile yet more into an already packed calendar.