“It’s a point­less com­pe­ti­tion. Who­ev­er wins it will be the worst win­ner of all time be­cause they’ll have played all sum­mer and then gone straight back in­to the league.” So said Ju­r­gen Klopp about the in­au­gur­al Club World Cup in June.

Sor­ry, Ju­r­gen. You got it wrong. The cat is out of the bag. The Club World Cup (CWC) is the best tour­na­ment in the FI­FA cal­en­dar. And it will be played in Brazil, Mo­roc­co, Spain or Qatar in 2029, whether you like it or not. It’s not just about the trea­sure the in­sa­tiable FI­FA mon­ey chasers will mine and the one bil­lion dol­lar purse the clubs will share (at 2025 val­ues). No. It’s be­cause glob­al in­ter­est in the first tru­ly GLOB­AL club com­pe­ti­tion has been stirred by the in­trigu­ing con­tests of CWC 2025. This in­ter­est is shared by politi­cians and clubs and more so by fans and even play­ers. Av­er­age at­ten­dance at the CWC sur­passed 42,000, equal to the av­er­age at­ten­dance at 2024/2025 UE­FA Cham­pi­ons League match­es. So learn to live with it, boys. This tour­na­ment is here to stay.

The CWC had a long evo­lu­tion from the In­ter­con­ti­nen­tal Cup (when on­ly Eu­rope and South Amer­i­ca par­tic­i­pat­ed), through the in­clu­sion of FI­FA con­fed­er­a­tion cham­pi­ons in 2000, to to­day’s mega event. And it was not with­out is­sue—from pitch qual­i­ty to tem­per­a­tures to kick-off times cater­ing to Eu­ro­pean view­ers (who are con­de­scend­ing­ly the least in­ter­est­ed in the tour­na­ment), to in­con­sis­tent at­ten­dance de­pend­ing on the match op­po­nents, to the rig­or­ous de­mands on play­ers of con­ti­nen­tal trav­el, to op­po­si­tion from some play­ers.

“You have to go and that’s it, be­cause we fol­low or­ders, we have to be there play­ing. Giv­ing up our va­ca­tion by oblig­a­tion is very com­pli­cat­ed be­cause it’s our right,” Barcelona’s Raphin­ha told Brazil­ian me­dia in June.

Foot­ball con­tin­ues to im­prove out Eu­rope,

South Amer­i­ca

But the tour­na­ment rose to its own oc­ca­sion. The qual­i­ty of club foot­ball out­side of Eu­rope and South Amer­i­ca is vis­i­bly im­prov­ing. Still, Africa was dis­ap­point­ing de­spite the no­table ef­fort of South Africa’s Mamelo­di Sun­downs, who won, drew and lost. CON­CA­CAF, de­spite Li­onel Mes­si’s In­ter Mi­a­mi and Ser­gio Ramos’ Mon­ter­rey, were out­classed. It was the South Amer­i­cans and Mex­i­cans who brought the fans and pas­sion to the sta­dia, but af­ter pro­vid­ing the last ten FI­FA club cham­pi­ons, Eu­rope re­mained dom­i­nant in 2025, with five of eight quar­ter-fi­nal­ists, three of four se­mi-fi­nal­ists and the two fi­nal­ists com­ing from UE­FA. In the end Chelsea out-PS­Ged PSG with high-tem­po press­ing and counter-press­ing, cold-blood­ed counter-at­tacks and a mata­dor’s eye and hand (or foot) in front of goal, all with mere­ly thir­ty-four per cent of that so vast­ly over­rat­ed sta­tis­tic—pos­ses­sion.

Yet, more than ever, the Eu­ro­pean be­lief that all they need to do is show up to win was chal­lenged in this tour­na­ment. And the biggest pro­tag­o­nist of the non-Eu­ro­pean cause was Al Hi­lal of the Roshn Sau­di League, which lost on­ly one of its five match­es, draw­ing with Re­al and de­feat­ing Man­ches­ter City along the way.

We once had a play­er in Sau­di, of course—Khaleem Hy­land, who played with Al Faisaly be­tween 2017 and 2020. A lot has hap­pened in the five years since. Sau­di foot­ball is no longer a back­wa­ter of the pro­fes­sion­al club game. Since the Sau­di Ara­bia Pub­lic In­vest­ment Fund (PIF) took con­trol of four Sau­di Pro League clubs in 2023 (Al Nassr, Al Ahli, Al It­ti­had and Al Hi­lal) and be­gan its league-build­ing strat­e­gy of sign­ing a mix­ture of glob­al tal­ents—young play­ers from South Amer­i­ca, in par­tic­u­lar, and ma­ture in­ter­na­tion­al stars from Eu­ro­pean leagues, led by Cris­tiano Ronal­do—the league has tak­en off. The goal is to make the Sau­di league one of the top ten leagues in the world by 2030. Not that most foot­ball fans know this, as they gorge on the steady di­et of Eu­ro­pean foot­ball dished out by the ma­jor West­ern stream­ers and broad­cast­ers. In­deed, the Roshn Sau­di League is con­temp­tu­ous­ly re­ferred to as “the camel league” by many. Well, af­ter Al Hi­lal ran Eu­ro­pean and Eng­lish pow­er­house Man­ches­ter City in­to the ground and beat them 4:3, the “camel league” stocks have risen. Re­spond­ing to crit­i­cism that top Eu­ro­pean play­ers are head­ing to Sau­di on­ly for a big pay­day, Al Hi­lal’s Sergej Milinkovic-Sav­ic, who joined two years ago from Lazio, quipped,

“Let’s see now if they will crit­i­cise us af­ter this game.” The glob­al mar­ket­ing and re­cruit­ment ap­peal of Al Hi­lal’s per­for­mance for the Sau­di league are im­mea­sur­able. Ex­pect fur­ther de­vel­op­ments there.

Can a T&T club

vie for a spot in 2029?

And all of this is hap­pen­ing with no re­la­tion­ship to lo­cal foot­ball, where the TT Pre­mier League draws in­signif­i­cant at­ten­dance (TTFA nev­er re­leas­es at­ten­dance fig­ures), and our top clubs can’t fight their way out of the Caribbean Club Cham­pi­onship in­to the Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons Cup. Jovin Jones once played for both Seat­tle Sounders and In­ter Mi­a­mi of MLS, two of the four Con­ca­caf rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the CWC, but that’s as close as we will get to the tour­na­ment for a long time. If the CWC had been played in the late 1980s, De­fence Force, which was a reg­u­lar par­tic­i­pant in the late stages of the Con­ca­caf club com­pe­ti­tion and won it in 1985, would sure­ly have been in the field. There are a lot of lessons in there, but that’s a top­ic for an­oth­er time.

Javier Tebas, La Liga pres­i­dent, said in June, “My goal is to en­sure there are no more Club World Cups—that’s very clear.”

Hard luck bud­dy. I’ll wa­ger every­thing I own on 2029 see­ing the sec­ond edi­tion of this mag­nif­i­cent tour­na­ment.

In Feb­ru­ary, Karl Heinz Rum­menigge, for­mer CEO of Bay­ern Mu­nich, made an ear­ly and de­ci­sive ar­gu­ment against ob­jec­tions to the tour­na­ment, say­ing,

“All the con­tract ne­go­ti­a­tions I’ve wit­nessed with us on­ly ever go in one di­rec­tion: high­er and high­er, fur­ther and fur­ther, faster and faster. But all that mon­ey has to come from some­where.”

I agree with lit­tle that Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no has done dur­ing his reign over FI­FA, but mon­ey makes the foot­ball world go ‘round. With an av­er­age turnover of US$33 mil­lion per match, no oth­er club com­pe­ti­tion in the world comes close to the CWC. Two bil­lion in to­tal rev­enue and one bil­lion in prize mon­ey are aw­ful­ly per­sua­sive. For their win­ning ef­fort Chelsea walked away with US$130 mil­lion. More­over, this tour­na­ment fur­thers the glob­al­i­sa­tion of elite foot­ball. It moves us along the con­tin­u­um that be­gan with the Ko­rea/Japan World Cup, to South Africa and to Qatar. It opens eyes and minds to foot­ball out­side of the well-beat­en Eu­rope/South Amer­i­can ax­is. In that re­gard, it is em­i­nent­ly note­wor­thy that not one ob­jec­tion to the CWC em­anat­ed from out­side of Eu­rope, and that is a sure sign that it is a move in the right di­rec­tion and em­braced by the peo­ples of the world.

I don’t know what to ex­pect from the di­lut­ed forty-eight team 2026 World Cup. Jor­dan against New Zealand or Suri­name against Ger­many promis­es no re­al mag­ic for me. But the Club World Cup 2029 does. There’s a long way to go, but talk to me about that. FI­FA has struck gold. Again.

GUEST COLUM­NIST

Kei­th Look-Loy

For­mer na­tion­al youth play­er

and TTFA Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor