What Did We Learn From The FIFA Club World Cup? | OneFootball

Chelsea sent shockwaves throughout world football on Sunday after demolishing UEFA Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain 3-0 via a first-half brace from Cole Palmer and a goal from Joao Pedro in the FIFA Club World Cup Final in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Whereas Chelsea booked their ticket to the final after beating Fluminense 2-0 on Tuesday, PSG would stake their claim as overwhelming favorites after thrashing Real Madrid 4-0. In the days leading up to the final, there were a number of events held in New York City to promote the big game and analyze the tournament on the whole.

On Saturday, FIFA chief Gianni Infantino greeted the worldwide media at Trump Tower, where FIFA had opened a new office just days earlier. “The golden era of global club football has started,” declared Infantino. “We can say definitely that this FIFA Club World Cup has been a huge, huge, huge success from all different points of view. We heard it first, some time ago, even some months ago, some weeks ago, ‘Well, it will never happen’. Well, it did happen, and it happened successfully.

“We heard, ‘Nobody will come to the games’ and we had, with the final tomorrow, almost two and a half million spectators in the stadiums. This is around 40,000 per match. There is no league in the world, except for the Premier League in England, [that] has an average of 40,000 spectators. We were hearing, ‘Nobody will broadcast this.’ Well, we concluded a one-of-a-kind revolutionary contract with DAZN allowing the streaming of every single second of every single match in every corner of the world for free.”

“We heard, as well, that financially it would not work, it would be a flop, ‘Nobody’s interested’. Well, I can say that we generated over $2 billion, almost $2.1 billion in revenue,” continued Infantino. ‘With this competition, for 63 matches, that makes an average of $33 million per match. There is no other club competition in the world today that comes anywhere close to a value of $33 million per match. So, it is already the most successful club competition in the world, from all different measurements.”

Just two days before that press briefing in Trump Tower, between 20 and 25 journalists crammed into a room in New York City’s Park Lane Hotel and listened to a discussion between retired Swiss goalkeeper Pascal Zuberbuhler, retired Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, current Portugal boss Roberto Martinez, as well as former USMNT coach Jurgen Klinsmann and ex Argentina midfielder Esteban Cambiasso. FIFA’s Technical Study Group, which featured Libya coach Aliou Cisse, retired USWNT legend Tobin Heath, and former Brazil international Gilberto Silva, spent the previous month vigorously studying each of the matches in the first-ever FIFA Club World Cup before finally producing their second analysis of the tournament.

In order to ascertain tactical patterns from the tournament, the panel juxtaposed the 2022 FIFA World Cup, which also featured 32 teams from all around the globe, with the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup. They found that there have been goals scored in the Club World Cup, as well as more goals scored from outside the box, whilst they also found that more and more substitutes are having an impact, with six of the 16 non-penalty goals that were scored in the tournament featuring a contribution from a substitute.

“It’s not about the style, it’s about being good with the style,” stated Martínez. “Now, the teams are more organized, they’re spending more time organizing the press. It’s more about the organization – which areas are you going to press? Now, there’s more protection for the player on the ball, now teams are more organized on the ball. We’ve seen teams, the South American teams, when they lose the ball, they’re happy to regain their position, they don’t want to win the ball back quick and high. We’ve seen the European teams, Man City, especially Bayern Munchen, PSG, Chelsea, they want to win the ball back quickly and go very strong and defend very high. It’s not about the style, it’s about being good at your style.”

Klinsmann concurred, adding, “I think the South American teams coming to this tournament here showed fantastic attitude, to prove a point that they’re very, very good teams. And also the other teams, the Europeans – after I would say a little bit of hesitation in the beginning – they really showed up. They embraced this tournament, and we saw fantastic football throughout.”

There was one thing that stood out about everything else during the nonstop month of football in the USA: the propensity for upsets. Over the course of the group stage, we saw various shocking upsets from Flamengo’s 3-1 comeback win vs. Chelsea, Inter Miami’s 2-1 comeback victory against Porto, Botafogo’s 1-0 win against Paris Saint-Germain, and Benfica’s 1-0 win against Bayern Munich. This trend continued throughout the knockout round, with Fluminense shocking Champions League runners-up Inter and Al-Hilal brushing past Manchester City in extra time. The biggest upset was saved for the final, when Chelsea dominated proceedings against PSG in New Jersey.

But whereas the FIFA Club World Cup has certainly caught on with African, South American, North American, and Asian supporters, it hasn’t quite managed to crack the Western European market, with many remaining skeptical about the new competition.

Many English fans have complained about the qualification criteria, arguing that teams like Liverpool and Arsenal are far more worthy of a spot than teams like Porto and Red Bull Salzburg.

“It was a big contrast from Europe and the rest of the world…the media in Europe were a bit more skeptical,” stated Wenger. “We had a lot of complaints about the number of games played…but the South American teams came here having played far more games than European teams. There was a confusion…the Club World Cup was needed because it gives the chance for everybody to become world champions.”

It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but the FIFA Club World Cup is here to stay.