Hocus Potus: Infantino’s boast of Club World Cup success is so much hot air

The site of Fifa’s new offices in New York feels particularly fitting. Trump Tower’s previous residents include one with a track record of declaring his ventures a glorious triumph, regardless of evidence to the contrary, and of proclaiming victory before something is over.

- RICHARD JOLLY SENIOR FOOTBALL CORRESPONDENT

And so it was, before the Club World Cup final and in Trump Tower, when, borrowing from his landlord’s playbook, Gianni Infantino said: “We can say definitely that this Fifa Club World Cup has been a huge, huge, huge success.”

Definitely? “The man who thinks he is God”, in FifPro’s words, may have supported their caustic verdict when he and Donald Trump inserted themselves in Chelsea’s victory celebrations at the final - much to the apparent bafflement of the players. Infantino already had his name on the trophy, so perhaps he can make such pronouncements.

But there are reasons to believe that, far from being a huge (huge, huge) success, it was a hubristic failure. They could be seen in the deserted stands. Infantino had predicted there would be “63 Super Bowls in one month”. The NFL would be in crisis if a Super Bowl attracted a crowd of just 3,412, as Ulsan HD FC against Mamelodi Sundowns did.

They were two of the lesser attractions but Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich, Manchester City and Juventus all played in at least one match with more than 30,000 empty seats, Chelsea, and Borussia Dortmund in one with almost 50,000 and Atletico Madrid in one with more than 60,000. Inter Milan, Champions League finalists, had a knockout tie that was barely a quarter full; as they lost it, they may be grateful their demise was witnessed by 54,837 unoccupied seats.

Fifa hugely overestimated the American public's willingness to pay premium prices to watch anything. In a world of dynamic pricing, tickets marketed for hundreds of dollars were reduced to a handful in a bid to persuade anyone to come.