Exceeding all expectations, the Club World Cup is football's next big competition

For too long, the Club World Cup was little more than an annual headache for the European champions.

Being sent to Japan or the Middle East in the middle of the season for a couple of games against inferior opposition for the chance to have a gold shield added to your shirt in what was little more than a glorified Super Cup.

You can attach FIFA’s name to the competition and you can call it a World Cup, but the Club World Cup was rapidly becoming a pointless endeavour.

The new format of the competition rightly attracted criticism and cynicism. Described as little more than a money-spinner, players’ hectic schedules became even busier for a competition nobody wanted in the first place.

Yes, some stiffer opposition would be present, but would anyone really care?

As it turns out, yes. The competition doesn’t yet have the buy-in of fans, sponsors or broadcasters, but that will come, particularly as it occupies one of the few spots on the calendar with no football. But FIFA’s first hurdle was to make sure the clubs themselves bought in, and a $1bn prize pool will do that.

While that means the big teams will care, nobody would watch a series of uncompetitive blowouts, right? Luckily for FIFA, that has been anything but the case.

Palmeiras won Group A with Porto being knocked out. Botafogo went through at Atletico Madrid’s expense. Benfica and Bayern Munich both needed late goals to down Boca Juniors. Flamengo beat Chelsea to top group D. Al Hilal took a point off the mighty Real Madrid and progressed at the expense of Red Bull Salzburg, going on to knock out Manchester City.

There have been drubbings which are never a good look in what’s supposed to be a competitive tournament, but Manchester City and Bayern Munich are no strangers to such results; City beat RB Leipzig 7-0 in a UEFA Champions League knockout tie while Bayern put nine past Dinamo Zagreb in the league phase last season. It’s a fairly small price to pay for the opportunity to showcase teams from around the world.

The big concern was how competitive games would be, but the non-European sides have certainly played their part. Of the eight quarter-final spots three are occupied by non-European clubs and there’ll be at least one representative in the semi-final.

The games haven’t just been competitive; they’ve been entertaining. Playing games in Florida in June shouldn’t be conducive to the most watchable affairs, but Manchester City’s 4-3 extra-time defeat to Al-Hilal almost justified the entire endeavour on its own.

The Saudi side were lethal on the counter and made City pay for their wastefulness, producing not just one of the biggest shocks of the tournament but also providing one of the most entertaining games.

While the competition has exceeded expectations, there are still a litany of issues to work out. The fact it’s coming in the middle of international tournaments means three out of four years won’t have a proper summer break for teams.

It coming once every four years means it will take time to build its reputation, and it will likely be a couple more cycles before it enters football’s wider consciousness, but the sparsity of the tournament will eventually enhance its prestige.

There’s still the concern of competitiveness in the early rounds, which won’t be easy to overcome, but even that isn’t a huge issue; UEFA competitions and indeed international tournaments see the occasional blowout. The knockout stage of the 2025 edition resembles an actual World Cup, with the odd unfancied side getting through and one of the big sides falling to a relative minnow, but ultimately the cream should rise to the top.

To make a real success of it, FIFA need to find a way of getting more of the top teams involved without creating another UEFA Champions League. The 2025 Club World Cup winners can’t call themselves world champions when none of the Premier League champions, Premier League runners-up, La Liga champions, Serie A champions and Serie A runners-up aren’t there.

There’s still a lot of negativity around the tournament but there’s been negativity around every tournament upon its inception. England didn’t bother entering the first three World Cups, while the Football League didn’t want English clubs competing in the new European Cup (which had several enormous gaps in quality in its early years).

Over time, these tournaments have grown into the two most prestigious competitions in football.

The Club World Cup might never quite get to that level, but it’s only going to get bigger and better.