The site of Fifa’s new offices in New York may feel 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.
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 celebrations of victory in 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 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 one with almost 50,000 and Atletico Madrid 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.
Fifa got the choice of venues horribly wrong. Kick-off times, too. Players such as Marc Cucurella and Enzo Fernandez said the heat was dangerous and detracted from the quality of matches. Some seem scheduled to appeal to a European television market; who, in many cases, ignored them anyway.
Fifa claimed the Club World Cup was watched by three billion people. Cumulatively? At the same time? Pick a big number, repeat it enough and some people may believe it but the chances are that the full data – for each country, for each game – will never be released. Viewing figures may be camouflaged or cherry-picked but it feels safe to assume the Club World Cup probably didn’t attract the audience or make the money Fifa intended.
It didn’t dominate the sporting summer. There was apathy among some leading broadcasters when Infantino implored them to take the broadcasting rights; there was a similar indifference among some of the footballing public who wouldn’t normally want to miss a major tournament. But then, of course, there was the question if this actually was a major tournament.
The one group of people who couldn’t sit it out were the overworked players, their welfare ignored by the governing body that eschewed its responsibility to look out for their interests by instead prioritising their own greed. FifPro, not invited to Infantino’s meeting about player workload, compared it to Nero’s Rome; the players risked burning in the “unacceptable conditions” of 100-degree temperatures. The weather delays meant that the manager who won the tournament, Enzo Maresca, branded it a “joke” after Chelsea’s match against Benfica ended four hours and 38 minutes after it started. The Club World Cup was always on, and yet sometimes not on.
It is a safe assumption there will be a knock-on effect at some stage in the next year for those who were there. There already is for Bayern Munich. It can be said that Jamal Musiala could have been injured in a friendly or training. But the fact is that he wasn’t; he was injured in the Club World Cup.
In due course, others could be injured because of it, because players cannot be afforded a proper break. Maresca marked victory in the final by saying he was more excited to get three weeks off than lift the trophy. The Club World Cup was somehow part of last season, next season and pre-season at the same time. It was so wrong that it even made Sepp Blatter right; he said there was too much football.
It was the tournament that alienated people with a lifelong love of the game. “The Club World Cup is the worst idea ever implemented in football,” said Jurgen Klopp. The Fifa employee Arsene Wenger disagreed. But then many of the complimentary comments came from those on the payroll, from the footballing legends on various junkets, the vacuous influencers there for no obvious reason, the employees of clubs compelled to take part. Those who were not there missed out on millions in prize money and a chance to build their brand. But, in a sporting sense, they may not have too many regrets about missing out.
Klopp, of course, would not have described the actual World Cup as dismissively. And it is true not everyone was convinced by that in 1930. Yet if ideas can take time to generate a groundswell of support, there is a problem when they are imposed from above, given diktats they are a spectacular success. “The golden era of global club football has started,” claimed Infantino.
Really? The best case for supporting that argument lay in the progress and prowess of the Brazilian clubs and the size of their support; certainly there seemed more of an appetite in South America than Europe for the Club World Cup.
And, inevitably, some of the actual football was good because, well, football is good. Much of it was eminently missable but there was Al-Hilal’s shock win over City, injury time between Real Madrid and Dortmund, PSG’s demolition jobs of both halves of Madrid, Cole Palmer’s star turn in the final. There was a shock at the last as PSG lost.
But as a whole, it was not as compelling as the Champions League. That remained the ultimate prize for PSG, the Club World Cup proving the anticlimactic postscript to their European glory. It was an over-hyped afterthought. There is little doubt that, while Chelsea have the title, PSG are the best team in the world. Which was somehow fitting for a tournament that did not live up to its creator’s grandiose billing.
“What was presented as a global celebration of football was nothing more than a fiction created by Fifa, promoted by its president, without dialogue, sensitivity, and respect for those who sustain the game with their daily efforts,” said FifPro. In Infantino’s logic, someone else’s fiction is his fact. A huge, huge, huge success? Only in Infantino’s world.
