Leader: All That Glitters Is Not Football Gold

The final of the Club World Cup was bizarre, surreal and supremely ugly in its beauty. The Club World Cup has been a month of lies and PR overkill from FIFA, a massive over-hyping of what, for 90% of the competition, was like watching walking football. But then this was never really about football as a sport.

Matches were too often played out in conditions that threatened the health of players and in front of crowds that were generally ambivalent to the outcome. But when you could buy a ticket for $14.50 to watch eventual winners Chelsea, who cares?

The competition’s opening match was selling a 4-ticket match pack to watch Lionel Messi have a gentle stroll around the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami for $20. That opener set the tone for a tournament that never lived up to its billing, and all streamed free of charge on a channel that most in the US don’t have on their cable systems or could be bothered to hunt for.

Baseball season, the NBA and Concacaf’s Gold Cup – delivered by Fox – dominated the airwaves and sports fans attention. NASCAR and Motocross were higher up the viewing dial.

Even a mad keen sports fan in the US could be forgiven for missing the whole of FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s ego fest. If you had stumbled across it then the obvious question for the uninitiated would be, ‘what position does this Infantino guy play?’

More than anything else the Club World Cup was an obsequious trip around the US that too often had very little to do with football, but everything to do with attempting to gorge on the cash of an unsuspecting US sports fanbase.

It didn’t really work, either as a spectacle nor a uniting of this very fractured world through football in a country that is doing its darndest to create and prey on that division, both domestically and globally.

‘Thank goodness for the Saudi bail out’, was an audible sigh heard from FIFA around the world.

And praise the lord for the football-illiteracy of US president Donald Trump who resembled the pantomime clown as he hosted the Juventus team at the White House for a press conference where the real issue on the media’s mind was whether he was going to bomb Iran but where he asked if there were any girls in Juve’s men’s team.

Trump later returned to muscle in on the awards ceremony and trophy lift with winners Chelsea – out-Infantino-ing the football emperor himself. It was buffoonery at its best and would have been laughable if it wasn’t so reflective of a game and governing body that has lost its moral compass and really doesn’t seem to give a toss.

The Saudis provided the money for this Club World Cup and Trump brought the sideshow that – whether you like it or not – turned attention away from the messy business of playing football, the game that FIFA is meant to protect and preserve, help fund and develop.

Around the important business of military march-ins, a half hour break for entertainment and Trump’s trophy-lift cameo, there was actually a game played that, although pretty much over by half time, had enough bite in it to keep interest.

Fifa president Gianni Infantino says the Club World Cup is “already the most successful club competition in the world”. With Infantino we learnt a long time ago that there isn’t much truth in what he says or any substantiation for these kinds of statements.

“We can say definitely that this Fifa Club World Cup has been a huge, huge, huge success. Of course, there are a lot of positives, some negatives,” he repeated. Just some negatives, but at least no-one died.

“We respect everyone’s opinion,” he said. NO YOU DON’T.

You don’t even respect your member association opinions and least of all your confederations’ opinions – those that have them.

If you respected everyone’s opinion then players’ union Fifpro would have been formally invited to discuss this competition and the issues facing player welfare – you know, the guys who you don’t pay but who you are expecting to put on the show to justify the $2 billion of funny money you have trousered over the past month.

You would also have invited the World Leagues Association (WLA) to the discussion table on the international calendar because it is through qualification via those leagues you get the teams to make up your competition. You not only want to have their teams but you want to eat their commercial and broadcast lunch as well – though the broadcast part of that wasn’t going too well until the Saudis pumped a distorting amount of cash into DAZN.

Both Fifpro and the WLA are having to take you to the European Court just to get a meeting.

So, NO, you really don’t care about their opinion or the sustainability of the professional game outside your Ivory Tower. And you certainly don’t care about the players unless they can be manipulated to your agenda or bring a huge social media following.

“The golden era of global club football has started,” said Infantino.

Don’t you mean the dark ages for club football where people with no direct link to the actual playing of the club game think they can now buy its identity, dispose of its history and gobble up its financial resource? Was there a single game in this Club World Cup that could match the top 20 games in UEFA’s Champions League this season, or even the top 100 fixtures of any of Europe’s major leagues?

So what did this Club World Cup deliver?

For starters $2 billion, or $33 million per match – at last, some substantiation. More than 2.5 million people in stadia – but more than 1 million seats unsold.

“It is already the most successful club competition in the world with all different measurements,” said Infantino.

But only some financial measurements and those are very debateable, both in their integrity and how they were achieved, and in their market reality. This was not a competition that generated this level of revenue because it was such a good idea that the whole world bought in. It was a competition that attracted money for other geo-political reasons. There was very little sporting or commercial integrity in this event from start to finish.

But, the expanded Club World Cup looks like it is here to say and probably in this format. Scarily FIFA says it wants to develop it further – half time shows of an hour in length, military flypasts and display of weaponry, perhaps a good old public flogging of the worst performing striker, and acceptance speeches from the world’s most despotic leaders are all on the cards, all serenaded by the hapless Robbie Williams who was almost a footballer once.

Certainly most of the confederations see the Club World Cup as an opportunity for their bigger nations to have clubs competing with the best of the rest of the world. And for that reason it does have a purpose.

Even UEFA have sort of accepted it but are unlikely to have accepted the ridiculous rhetoric from Infantino.

But the real love for this competition is from those who have benefitted financially. That cheque means more to them than winning the fabulous glitter ball with Infantino’s name engraved on it. So far fans of those clubs that did participate don’t seem to be particularly moved by it – they certainly weren’t rushing to create their indelible part of a football tapestry in the way they do in other domestic and international club championships.

There is of course the increased financial imbalance FIFA is now creating with this competition, not just in the dominant European leagues, but in pretty much every country that had a team playing. That needs some serious attention.

So does the geo-politicising of the competition.

Somewhere this competition must make itself part of football if it is to really ignite in the way that the World Cup does (which happened well before Infantino became master of the universe).

This Club World Cup has been endlessly sold by FIFA in all its communication as the inaugural World Cup. Another lie. It is not the inaugural Club World Cup – that was held in xxxx in xxxx and there have been xxx since. The last one just last December in Doha and won by Real Madrid.

The thing about the World Cup is that it is bigger than FIFA and its money-hungry, power-driven individuals. Once it kicks off – and Qatar was an example in the way that Argentina was in 1978 – all the geo-politics, the moralities and lack of, disappear into the background. The nations, the players, the fans and sports diaspora takeover what is theirs and own it, pretty much every minute of every game. That is truly beautiful.

The Club World Cup wasn’t anything like that and became a political and PR tool from start to finish. It generated neither love nor community with few moment of brilliance to celebrate. Instead, it celebrated authoritarian rule and a transactional culture of money, money, money. That was its storyline from start to finish.

The beautiful game really isn’t that beautiful when played out like this.

In 2015 FIFA was a hair’s breadth away from being classified as a mafia organisation by the US Justice Department – indeed the US vs FIFA case was a RICO investigation. Instead, FIFA’s very clever lawyers (all pre-Infantino) managed to have it classified as a victim – though that remains debatable.

Ten years on and it feels like FIFA in its opulent magnificence has taken the world’s game – it is a game that belongs to everyone – to a new spiritual, cultural and soulless low. There was very little to make you feel good or inspired about this competition – unless of course you are FIFA’s, Chelsea’s or PSG’s head of bean counting and your raison d’etre for being in football is to stand on the biggest pile of money possible.

Insideworldfootball.com