With income from the FIFA Club World Cup and Champions League, PSG completely dominates French football - Photo: REUTERS
La Liga (Spanish Championship) president Javier Tebas has vowed to fight hard to abolish the FIFA Club World Cup.
ESL Lessons
First, let’s recall the battle over the idea of creating the ESL Super League (ESL) that was put forward 4 years ago. As soon as ESL was announced, UEFA (European Football Federation) and FIFA strongly opposed it. The two leading football bodies threatened to ban ESL teams from their tournaments. This opened up a long legal battle that followed.
As a result, ESL won. The European Court of Justice declared that UEFA or FIFA had no right to prevent the formation of this tournament. But the original alliance that founded ESL also broke up when the clubs withdrew one by one, leaving only two key teams, Real Madrid and Barca.
It will take time to determine who will win and who will lose in the ESL war. But the football world has learned many lessons from that "uprising". FIFA and UEFA do not have the power to crush every individual idea. And on the other hand, creating more tournaments is always a challenge.
When the game is fair, FIFA and UEFA have the right to object to ESL. Conversely, the football world also has the right to object to these two leading bodies.
Messi in Inter Miami jersey at the FIFA Club World Cup - Photo: Reuters
The welcomers, the naysayers
Those objections, in the first year of the FIFA Club World Cup’s expansion to a special level, were silenced with money. Prize money ranging from $30 million to $125 million for the big teams and $5 million to $10 million for the smallest teams participating in the tournament made the FIFA Club World Cup a welcome initiative. But that was the welcome from the teams participating.
"Football has no room for this tournament at the moment. There is no need for another tournament to transfer money to the same group of clubs, the same group of players. We need to maintain this ecosystem and get rid of the FIFA Club World Cup.
"Let's just do it like before, play one week, and that's it," said Javier Tebas. What Tebas meant was this: The top European teams have already received rewards from their tournaments. These are bonuses, tickets to the Champions League, Super Cups, and advertising contracts. Creating a really big tournament to continue to "reward" these teams is redundant.
On the other hand, it could cause the football world to gradually become unbalanced, when the revenue of the big teams is too much. PSG is already the richest club in the world , with a revenue of 800 million euros last season and the bottomless pocket of billionaire Nasser Al-Khelaifi. The Champions League title and going far in the FIFA Club World Cup 2025 could raise this revenue to over 1 billion euros. With such wealth, is there any team in France that can stop PSG in the future?
The same goes for Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga (Germany), Real Madrid in La Liga, and Man City in the Premier League (England). The teams participating in the FIFA Club World Cup are satisfied with the huge prize money, along with lucrative sponsorship contracts. But outsiders cannot be satisfied. Especially when FIFA has a rule that each country can only have a maximum of 2 clubs participating in the tournament.
That means that even if the better teams in La Liga, Bundesliga, Premier League try harder, it will be difficult for them to participate in the FIFA Club World Cup. This tournament will always be the playground of Real Madrid, Man City, Bayern Munich, PSG... The only fluctuations are between Liverpool or Chelsea, between Barca or Atletico...
From the perspective of a European football manager like Mr Tebas, it is understandable why the FIFA Club World Cup is not welcomed. Don't assume that this tournament will take place again in 4 years.
Source: https://tuoitre.vn/fifa-lai-doi-mat-song-gio-20250619083534631.htm
Comment (0)