“The golden era of global club football has started,” said FIFA President at Trump Tower in New York on Saturday. “We can say definitely this has been a huge, huge, huge success.”
It’s the kind of hyperbole favored by the owner of Trump Tower, where FIFA have recently rented an office. Donald Trump and Infantino have grown ever closer this year, ostensibly because of this revamped and expanded tournament and next year’s World Cup, to be hosted in the USA, Canada and Mexico — an event many feel will be used by Trump to further push his message.
“He loves the game,” Infantino said of the man who sat next to him at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on Sunday. “You cannot organize a competition like this without the full support of the government. Great thanks to – he has been fantastic.”
So too was Chelsea’s Cole Palmer. The English attacking midfielder scored twice and made a third goal for Brazilian striker Joao Pedro to put European champions Paris Saint-Germain to the sword before halftime. PSG had no answer in the second half, as Chelsea cruised to victory.
Big money tournament
Infantino’s main measure of success for the Club World Cup, though, appears to be financial. He reported revenues of over $2 billion (€1.7 billion) and average earnings of $33 million per match for FIFA. Not bad for an organization whose remit is organization and promotion of the sport, rather than pure profit.
FIFA aside, the biggest financial beneficiaries were the two teams that contested the final. Chelsea will get $40 million for the final alone while Paris Saint-Germain gets $30 million for the match, plus both get their share of the overall $1 billion prize pool. It’s a sizable chunk, even for a team owned by an American private equity firm who bought it from a and A $250 million solidarity payment was also promised by FIFA “to club football across the world.”
The fact that the final contained European teams who won two of three continental competitions in the season just finished is evidence of the primacy of European football. Three of the four semifinalists were European, as were the majority of the quarterfinalists. It remains to be seen how much a solidarity payment split between the rest of the teams in FIFA’s 211 member states will impact the inequalities in the global game.
Though Infantino has been effusive in his praise, many in the game have found failings with the first edition of a revamped competition pushed through by the FIFA boss.
“The Club World Cup is the worst idea ever implemented in football in this regard,” , who coached Liverpool and Borussia Dortmund said during the tournament. “People who have never had or do not have anything to do with day-to-day business anymore are coming up with something. There is insane money for participating, but it’s also not for every club.
“Last year it was the Copa [America] and the European Championship, this year it’s the Club World Cup, and next year the . That means no real recovery for the players involved, neither physically nor mentally.”
Players struggle in extreme temperatures
The issue of exhaustion, echoed by many players, coaches and fans throughout the tournament, was exacerbated by the
“Honestly, the heat is incredible. The other day I had to lie down on the ground because I was really dizzy,” said Chelsea midfielder Enzo Fernandez on the eve of the final. “Playing in this temperature is very dangerous, it’s very dangerous.” coach Niko Kovac, meanwhile, described conditions for his team in Charlotte as being like “a sauna” in the group stage.
While there are mandated cooling breaks, Infantino has now said indoor air-conditioned stadiums will be used as much as possible for daytime kickoffs across the 16 venues that will host 2026 World Cup matches. But only Atlanta, Dallas, Houston and Vancouver (which has the coldest average temperatures of any venue at the relevant time of year) have such facilities in place.
Player welfare addressed, World Cup looms
FIFA also made a surprise player welfare announcement on Saturday. An agreement has been made for a mandatory 72-hour minimum gap between games and a three-week period of rest in the off season, with , among those who have been pushing hard for similar measures. The amount of long haul trips taken by players will also be considered in future.
All that may well have been some distance from the Chelsea players’ minds as, after a brief scuffle on the pitch with PSG players and staff, they celebrated a win that clearly meant something to them.
As he headed from the stands to hand medals to those victorious players, a beaming Infantino was likely reflecting favorably on the beginning of his “golden era”. The next stage will be the biggest one of all, the World Cup. Infantino seems well disposed to let Trump bask in some of football’s light there too.
Edited by: Louis Oelofse
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