The draw for the new Club World Cup, expanded next year from seven to thirty-two teams and contested in the United States, will take place on December 5 in Miami.
The draw for the new Club World Cup, expanded next year from seven to thirty-two teams and contested in the United States, will take place on December 5 in Miami, FIFA announced on Monday. The date was all the more anticipated as many questions still surround this competition, whose revenues and benefits for the clubs remain a mystery: its TV broadcasters are not known and only one sponsor has been revealed, the Chinese group Hisense.
Now scheduled for December 5 from 1:00 p.m. local time (6:00 p.m. GMT), the draw will determine the eight groups of four teams who will compete in the first phase of the tournament. The 16 clubs finishing in the first two places in each group will qualify for the knockout phase, from the round of 16 to the final, without a match for third place.
Competition criticized
All those qualified for this quadrennial tournament, the first edition of which will take place from June 15 to July 13, 2025 in twelve American stadiums, will be known by then: for the moment only the winner of the Copa Libertadores is missing, whose The 100% Brazilian final will pit Atletico Minoro against Botafogo de Futebol e Regatas on November 30.
Wanted since the end of 2016 by Fifa boss Gianni Infantino, the new competition also faces numerous criticisms as the calendar is already overloaded. The players’ union Fifpro and the Association of World Leagues announced at the end of July their intention to take the matter to the European Commission against Fifa.
The newly minted Ballon d’Or winner, the Spaniard Rodri, for his part judged in September that the footballers were “close” to a strike movement. The current calendar, “in my humble opinion, is too much,” he insisted, even before including the new Club World Cup, in which his team, Manchester City, must participate.
