The FIFA Club World Cup showed the U.S. is “capable of being a soccer nation,” but President Trump’s “unawareness shows how far away soccer is in this country compared to the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL among sports viewers,” according to Safid Deen of USA TODAY. Trump delivered this “perplexingly hilarious and cringeworthy moment that easily is the lasting image of this competitive, yet controversial, Club World Cup hosted in the United States this summer.” The World Cup will take over the country next summer with Trump and FIFA President Gianni Infantino continuing to be the “leading faces” outside of some players such as Inter Miami F Lionel Messi and Al Nassr F Cristiano Ronaldo. Before Trump’s “poor soccer etiquette stole the show,” the stories of the Club World Cup were “photos of empty seats at NFL-sized stadiums, how players coped with playing in high temperatures in the height of the summer heat, and how the tournament overloaded the players’ packed schedules” (USA TODAY, 7/13).
WAS IT A SUCCESS? In London, Richard Jolly writes there are “reasons to believe that, far from being a huge (huge, huge) success, it was a hubristic failure.” Those reasons could be “seen in the deserted stands.” Jolly: “Infantino had predicted there would be ’63 Super Bowls in one month.’ The NFL would be in crisis if a Super Bowl attracted a crowd of just 3,412, as Ulsan against Mamelodi Sundowns did.” FIFA “hugely overestimated the American public’s willingness to pay premium prices to watch anything.” In a world of dynamic pricing, tickets marketed for hundreds of dollars were “reduced to a handful in a bid to persuade anyone to come.” FIFA got the choice of venues “horribly wrong,” along with kick-off times, too. Viewing figures “may be camouflaged or cherry-picked but it feels safe to assume the Club World Cup probably didn’t attract the audience or make the money Fifa intended.” It did not “dominate the sporting summer.” As a whole, it was “not as compelling as the Champions League” (London INDEPENDENT, 7/14).
JUST ANOTHER GAME: YAHOO SPORTS’ Henry Bushnell notes there is no trophy parade for Chelsea back in London. At MetLife Stadium, even Chelsea players “downplayed or resisted the notion that Sunday’s triumph over PSG put them atop global soccer.” Chelsea D Reece James said on Friday, “If we win on Sunday, we were probably the best team on the day; does it make us the best team in Europe? I’m not sure. We’re striving to get there. Whether one game decides that, that’s probably up to you to decide.” Bushnell adds FIFA’s idea, of course, was that this “would be the biggest trophy, awarded to a champion among champions of Champions Leagues” (YAHOO SPORTS, 7/14). THE ATHLETIC’s Oliver Kay writes there was “undeniably something odd about the whole venture.” It is “strange to see and hear the president of FIFA repeatedly claiming that this is an entirely new tournament, that Chelsea are ‘the first official FIFA Club World Cup champions’ rather than acknowledging they have won an expanded version of a competition that has existed since 2000, and that Chelsea previously won in 2021 as reigning champions of Europe.” Kay: “Surely it would make more sense to talk up a competition’s history rather than deny it -- unless, of course, this is more about Infantino’s personal brand” (THE ATHLETIC, 7/14).
MEANS SOMETHING: In London, Martin Samuel wrote the CWC final was “at heart just a football match.” So much has been made of the cash dividends, “but this was about more.” A worthwhile competition remains, and Chelsea are world champions. Samuel: “You may not like that, you may not like this; but they deserved it, and the naysayers will now just have to chew it raw, for four years” (London TIMES, 7/13). In Philadelphia, Jonathan Tannenwald wrote the fact that a team from London topped a team from Paris in a stadium down the road from N.Y. “will make a lot of people happy: at FIFA, in Chelsea’s suites, and perhaps even the Premier League’s offices.” The clubs are “more accustomed to running summer tournaments in the U.S. themselves,” instead of FIFA doing it and cashing the profits. They will all get a piece of this pie, and “so will the many American TV networks that show Chelsea’s games” (PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, 7/13).
WE’RE READY: In Atlanta, Doug Roberson wrote Atlanta is “ready” for next year’s FIFA World Cup after success in hosting the Club World Cup at Mercedes-Benz Stadium for six matches with the total attendance for the six matches at 258,265. Atlanta Sports Council President Dan Corso said, “I think for a first-year event, it couldn’t have gone any better.” The grass held up well over three weeks. Another focus was security. Mercedes-Benz Stadium VP Dietmar Exler said that there were “no issues and credited the pretournament research trips that stadium security, along with members of the Atlanta Police Department, took to matches in Germany and England to gather intelligence.” Corso said that more than 800 people volunteered to help during the six matches (ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, 7/11).
HOLD ON CHANGE IS COMING: THE ATHLETIC’s Adam Crafton noted as for the future of this tournament, with the next edition currently scheduled for 2029, Infantino hinted “changes may be afoot but shirked direct questions.” He said that he would love to have EPL clubs Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur, La Liga club Barcelona, and Serie A clubs Napoli and Milan involved (THE ATHLETIC, 7/12). Kay in a separate piece wrote the CWC has “been a strange experience.” There has been a “lot to take issue with, from the way it was crowbarred into a small gap in a horribly congested calendar to the commercially driven insistence on playing matches in scorching heat at the height of an American summer.” Kay added the tournament “has had its moments.” It is “hard not to imagine that Infantino’s vision for the future goes much further than a 32-team tournament every four years” (THE ATHELTIC, 7/13).
