Rob Fielding says that the revamped FIFA Club World Cup competition shows the hypocrisy, the greed and the self-serving nature of the game’s elite.
Rob Fielding writes…
If one competition encapsulates the viewpoint of the world’s top football teams it’s the Club World Cup. It seems to be everything the global elite of the game desire – exclude the smaller clubs, remove the jeopardy of relegation, ramp up the prize money and play it in soulless stadia. Remarkably, the media mops up this entirely pointless competition.
It’s intriguing that the event even happens. After all the Premier League ditched cup replays but are happy to play in a meaningless summer borefest. If the Premier League prima donas were unable to stretch their legs for a further ninety minutes of a cup replay then why do they have the energy to spend part of the summer (surely a period for rest and recuperation) playing endless meaningless games against other top clubs? Could the answer possibly be that the money earned from the Club World Cup is more than they’d earn from the FA Cup?
Whatever the reason, the Club World Cup certainly encapsulates everything the elite seem to want the game to become. It’s run by FIFA who as usual have their finger firmly off the pulse. FIFA completely ignored criticism from The World Leagues Forum who argued that FIFA should “consider the interests of national competitions” (like, well, the FA Cup) and were concerned about a continuous “overloading of the calendar” and – above all – how the governing body is supposed to be concerned with the wider welfare of the game but instead “consistently” prioritises its own interests.
Clearly FIFA think that fans are more interested in watching a pointless match between Real Madrid and Al-Hilal in a half-empty stadium than they would be in a FA Cup replay between a minnow and a cup giant played in front of an electric atmosphere at a partisan home ground.
The Club World Cup is dull, it’s soulless and most of all it’s hypocritical. When you see coverage of it on the TV just remember – they dumped FA Cup replays for this!
Image: Flickr, creative commons licence by lolijackson
I fully agree with you they only interested them selves
My sentiments exactly. We keep hearing managers moan about tired or injured players and that they play too many matches, so their clubs end up in a competition like this or going on pre-season tours to the back-of beyond to play in meaningless competitions against teams we have never heard of.