WASHINGTON, DC (Dec 12, 2008) USSoccerPlayers -- With the 2008 FIFA Club World Cup underway, here's what you need to know about the tournament.
History
FIFA started the Club Championship idea as a replacement for the old Toyota Cup, a competition limited to UEFA and CONMEBOL. It launched officially in January of 2000 in Brazil. FIFA followed the World Cup practice of allowing the host country automatic entry. Brazil chose Corinthians, who won the tournament over CONMEBOL champions Vasco da Gama in an all-Brazil final. Necaxa beat Real Madrid (defending Intercontinental champion) to finish third. Both games went to penalties. Defending Champions League winner Manchester United didn't make it out of the group stage.
The 2001 edition didn't happen, as we'll explain in a vintage article further down the page. With the original plan to make this an annual competition to fill what many expected to be a winter break for the major European leagues, we won't see another game played until 2005.
Brazil's Sao Paulo won the 2005 edition hosted by Japan, beating Liverpool in the final. CONCACAF again took third-place, this time with Saprissa beating Al Ittihad. Japan becomes the regular host for the tournament through this year's version, with Abu Dhabi taking over in 2009.
The 2006 Cup is again won by a Brazilian club. Internacional beat Barcelona with Al-Ahly finishing third with a win over Club America.
UEFA finally wins the FIFA Club World Cup in 2007, when AC Milan beat Boca Juniors. Japan took third when the Urawa Red Diamonds beat Etiole du Sahel on penalties.
2008
This year's version has two Australian clubs in the play-in, courtesy of the A-League playing in both the OFC and AFC Champions Leagues. Adelaide United beat Waitakere United 2-1 to advance to the quarterfinals.
As seeded clubs, Manchester United and CONCACAF champion LDU Quito have buys into the semifinals. With a total of $16.5 million in prize money, United and Quito need two wins to take the top prize. In the loser bracket, there are third-place and fifth-place games.
US Television Schedule
All Games On Fox Soccer Channel
All Times Eastern
Dec 12: Al-Ahly - Pachuca at 11:30pm
Dec 14: Adelaide United - Gamba Osaka at 5:30am
Dec 17: 5th-place game at 2:30am
Dec 17: LDU Quito - Quarterfinal Winner at 5:30am
Dec 18: Manchester United - Quarterfinal Winner at 5:30am
Dec 20: 3rd-place game at 2:30am
Dec 21: Final at 5:30am
The following article originally ran on May 18th, 2001.
FIFA makes the wrong call on pulling World Club Championship
By J Hutcherson - CHICAGO, IL (May 18, 2001) Internetsoccer -- So Fifa has decided that for the good of the game the 2001 World Club Championship is “postponed” until 2003.
In other words, Fifa has decided the profit margin for this summer’s competition has been substantially lowered after their break with marketing partner ISL and rather than take the loss and continue with a scheduled competition, they’d rather cancel it outright.
Classy move, especially since teams like the Los Angeles Galaxy had already rescheduled several weeks of their season to go to Spain and the brackets and pairings had already been announced.
The fine folks at Fifa laid out three reasons for the cancellation, uhm, postponement though you would think that the prospect of champions League and International qualifiers would’ve been evident a year ago. And though I’m not really sure what “the economic crises affecting the countries of some of the participating clubs” is really supposed to mean, but once again any situation affecting Brazil and Argentina has been obvious for some time.
It should be that much worse now that Fifa has taken away a guaranteed payday from all clubs involved. Just participating was worth over $2 million dollars for the likes of Wollongong Wolves, Al-Hilal, CD Olimpia, and Jubilo Iwata, with the winner taking home $8.5 million dollars.
And thus the real reason for the cancellation, the third provided in the press release, that Fifa has lost its marketing partner for the competition and is afraid they will take a financial loss if they stage the tournament.
That’s fine, but don’t act as if there were other reasons that were just as paramount in deciding not to go ahead with the World Club Championships.
Over $41 million in prize money is a lot, but it was announced in February giving you some idea of what Fifa thought they could generate from the competition. Better to simply lower the prize money than cancel it outright though, and Fifa should know better.
For those of us that still naively believe that the game is about results on the field rather than the ability to turn a healthy profit, this is about as ridiculous as it gets. Sure, Fifa has already spun it as a necessary move for the good of all involved, but in reality it’s a precautionary move to stabilize the rights bonanza for the main event, next summer’s World Cup in Japan and South Korea.
And so the organization that continues to push for a unified world footballing calendar has completely disrupted it, made club-qualifying tournaments irrelevant, and will simply start over again in two years time.
“Postponement” suggests the same twelve teams will be involved which makes no sense, and now the bids for hosting the 2003 competition will be shelved. It’s a ridiculous situation, undermining a competition that Fifa has spent the last three years trying to establish as important only to sacrifice it when their own financial situation changed.
So the founders of the competition nobody really wanted in the first place have now decided they can’t be bothered to save it two months out from its start date. And regardless of how they attempt to rationalize it, the decision was a poor one, taken too quickly, and ultimately relegating the World Club Cup, Club World Championship, or whatever they actually want us to call it to also-ran status.
It will take a lot to win back even the casual interest in the tournament in two years time, much less motivating the clubs to take it seriously. As more than one South American tournament has proven, money isn’t enough, there has to be meaning as well.
And now the clubs involved, the players, and fans are left with open dates from July 29th to August 12th with nothing to play for while Fifa scrambles to minimize the impact of lost revenue in the wake of the split with ISL.
Like laying out a bunch of nicely wrapped empty boxes at Christmas, it isn’t fair for those who believed that Fifa was committed to establishing this tournament as the World Cup for clubs, and certainly not to those fans who looked forward to seeing their teams battle it out in Spain.
But in this advanced age of football, it isn’t really all that surprising.
