FIFA’s 2025 Club World Cup Is Giving Serious Concacaf Vibes

Concacaf President Victor Montagliani, right, and FIFA President Gianni Infantino present the ... More champion’s trophy of the 2023 Concacaf Gold Cup after Mexico’s victory over Panama in the 2023 final. Last year, months and months transpired when we knew that Major League Soccer would get an extra berth into the 2025 Club World Cup for the United States’ role as tournament host, but not what criteria would be used to award that berth. Then only three weeks after Lionel Messi and Inter Miami clinched the 2024 MLS Supporters’ Shield, FIFA revealed – with no window into its “process” — that Messi’s Herons would be the host club, supposedly for winning the Shield. Then in March, FIFA ruled Club Leon would be removed from its Club World Cup berth because it shared ownership groups with another Mexican entrant, CF Pachuca. The following month, FIFA president Gianni Infantini suggested LAFC would play Club America in a playoff for the open spot, based on LAFC finishing second to Club Leon in 2023 and Club America finishing 2024 as the top unqualified Concacaf-affiliated club in FIFA’s Club World Cup rankings. That playoff became official on Tuesday following the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruling in FIFA’s favor and against Leon. Even if there is sporting merit to either of these somewhat sudden decisions, the outward appearance is of FIFA tampering with its new competition to make it as “marketable” as possible at the expense of competitive integrity. In other words, it feels a lot more like the Concacaf Gold Cup than the FIFA World Cup. Perhaps disturbingly, the launch of this new event suggests Infantino and FIFA may look at Concacaf as the standard bearer for how big tournaments should be hosted. The Gold (Cup) Standard? Rather than rotating hosting rights for the Concacaf Gold Cup – the region’s equivalent of the UEFA European Championships or Conmebol’s Copa America – across member nations, the tournament has been staged primarily in the United States for almost its entire existence. The reason, of course, is that the expatriot populations of Mexico and other regional nations, who all have greater purchasing power than in their homelands as participants in the U.S. economy, make an American tournament far more profitable than any other version. Or at least that’s the truth in the short term. But like so much in this frustrating part of the soccer world, choosing short-term rewards every time has arguably hampered long-term development. Because it is played every two years – rather than in a more sensible quadrennial cycle – it’s commonplace for both the U.S. and Mexico to field less than their top-choice squads in favor of more provisional rosters used building squad depth. And it’s regular practice for the tournament to be organized to make a meeting between those two most popular sides before the final as unlikely as possible, even when their seeding doesn’t suggest that is what should happen. As a result, the Gold Cup still carries lesser importance to its participating nations (and particularly those who can realistically win the honor) than the Euros or Copa America, and is often viewed with as much cynicism as affection. Globally, its stature is arguably even below the African Cup of Nations. No Culture With Clubs At the club level, the Concacaf Champions Cup is currently in the second year of a format that features a one-game final at the home of the team with the better results through the previous three rounds of the tournament. The rationale seems to be a lack of time to squeeze a home-and-home final amid the Liga MX playoffs, and a lack of belief that a neutral-venue final would be a good commercial draw. The result, at least this year, is that the June 1 final between the Vancouver Whitecaps and Cruz Azul in Mexico City will probably be overshadowed by FIFA’s special play-in match between LAFC and Club America the night before, not to mention the far-more watched UEFA Champions League final the same weekend and the Copa Libertadores final last November. When you believe your marquee event isn’t worthy of marquee treatment, the prophecy fulfills itself. Maybe chasing the money in short term is always the safest thing. But events like the World Cup, the Euros and Copa America hold long-term importance – and greater commercial value – because of a long history of balancing commercial considerations with competitive ones. For example, while tournaments held in Russia, Qatar and even the present-day United States feel somewhat unseemly, at least FIFA didn’t spend the winter of 2017-18 trying to create a backdoor for Italy, the Netherlands and the USA to somehow get a spot in the tournament they did not obviously earn. The Club World Cup appears to be Infantino’s baby, and supposedly the hope is someday it will be as revered as the one that features national teams. But the unseriousness with which FIFA has treated qualification suggests a future more like the Concacaf Gold Cup: A moneymaking machine that provides some memorable moments, but not the trophy any child grows up dreaming of winning. Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ianquillen/2025/05/07/fifas-2025-club-world-cup-is-giving-serious-concacaf-vibes/