Fifa president Gianni Infantino has announced a new 32-team men’s Club World Cup. The first edition of the tournament will be taking take place in 2025. The footballing authority also announced Morocco will be the host of the 2022 Club World Cup along with revealing plans to launch an equivalent women’s tournament. The new men’s competition is scheduled to be played in the summer before the 2026 World Cup when the Confederations Cup is usually held.
Earlier in the week, reports in the Mirror and Daily Mail suggested Champions League clubs were set to reject the proposal for the new format but nothing of that sort has taken place yet. The plans for a 24-team Club World Cup have been in the works since 2019 when FIFA announced the competition will begin in 2021. But the tournament was called off due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Those plans were set to include eight European teams which were the Champions League and Europa League winners from the previous four seasons. But now there’s no plan announced on how the 32 teams will be selected for the tournament.
While speaking to the press, Infantino said, “The new men’s Club World Cup will take place in 2025 and will feature 32 teams. The 32-team tournament will go ahead, making it like a World Cup.” Infantino also talked about the international calendar as he said, “[Plan] to use the March windows in the even years to organise friendly tournaments between four teams from different confederations. A FIFA World Series types of events.”
The 32-team tournament will be adding more games to the schedule, which will create issues regarding player welfare. The major change according to Infantino will be that FIFA revenues will rise from $7.5billion (£6.149bn) in the current four-year cycle (2018-2022) to $ 11 billion (£9bn) in the next four years (2022-2026), according to football financial expert Nick Harris.
