Always wanting to revolutionize football, the authorities are starting to get lost. While the new format of the UEFA Champions League is due to come into force from next year, FIFA is also going ahead with its competition and has just announced the details of its next Club World Cup, the “FIFA World Cup”, which will be played from June 15 to July 13, 2025 in the United States. However, the competition would take place on a less regular frequency, that is to say, every four years. And if the current format is intended to be rather short with only the winners of each continental competition, it is now a completely different story.
“The FIFA Council met and made key decisions regarding the first 32-team FIFA Club World Cup™”, explains the body in its press release. With the particularity, the participation of six clubs from South America, four clubs from Central America, four African clubs, four Asian clubs and one club from Oceania. The qualified clubs will be the last three or four winners of their continental competition and the others will be “selected using a confirmed ranking methodology based on sporting criteria”.
12 European clubs at the meeting
But there is a specificity for the European continent since 12 clubs will be there, with the participation of the last four winners of the Champions League (Chelsea, Real Madrid, Manchester City and the winner of the 2024 edition), as well as the top eight teams in the UEFA rankings, but Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich, Inter Milan, FC Porto and Benfica are already guaranteed to qualify for the next edition.
For the conduct of this competition, this will follow the model of the last FIFA World Cups, with a group stage made up of eight groups of four teams per group, which will see the first two teams from each group qualify for a phase at direct elimination going from the eighth to the final. But that’s not all, since in addition to this new Club World Cup, there will be an intercontinental club cup from 2024, which will take the current format of the Club World Cup, and which will take place every year .
