At the end of the Club World Cup, a bitter truth remains for football

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On my tranquil football blog, Fever Pit'ch, I recently put forward a bold thesis, claiming: "The Club World Cup is the best invention since the Champions League was founded in 1992." The headline alone caused quite a stir on social media.

I was forced to formulate a new line to counter the shitstorm : "The truth about the Club World Cup that no one wants to hear." The truth is: The Club World Cup is here to stay.

Before readers gasp and launch a counterattack: I really don't need anyone to explain to me how bloated and contrived FIFA President Gianni Infantino's new XXL tournament is, ruining the summer break. I myself spent two weeks in the US for FOCUS online and watched almost a dozen games. My business trip to Miami and New Jersey took on grotesque proportions at times.

There's no more precise way to describe what this Club World Cup has always been about: money. So that the 32 participants could claim their share of the one billion US dollars in prize money, they tolerated practically everything that disrupts, hinders, and ruins professional football. During the tournament, I jotted down everything that struck me as negative, even the €30 for a kebab . In the second week, I had to continue my notes on another page.

It starts with the stadiums: Firstly, most are unsuitable for football and secondly, unsuitable for the summer. Take the final stadium: Metlife Stadium in New Jersey, an hour's drive from New York City, is a concrete bowl without a roof. From September to January, the Giants and Jets can play football here – but under the July sun, the spectators sweat in tropical temperatures, and the grass dries out as they watch.

All European teams complained about the playing surface: The Americans, with their preference for artificial turf in American football, had no idea how to lay, maintain, and water natural grass to ensure that footballs find their way from sender to receiver. The water from the sprinkler systems evaporated before it even reached the ground. Only a few arenas, for example, in Atlanta, had a protective roof. Almost all the others were exposed to blazing sun.

This is an ordeal for everyone involved, especially with kickoff times at 12 noon. We remember how the substitutes for Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich stayed in their air-conditioned locker rooms during particularly hot World Cup matches in Cincinnati, Ohio, to avoid heatstroke . The problem is looming again next year, when the national teams travel to the 2026 World Cup. FIFA wants to reconsider the time. But does moving it to 3 p.m. make things any better?

Hour-long flights to venues in Cincinnati or Charlotte were not only harmful to the climate, but also pointless: Too many World Cup matches were played virtually behind closed doors because no American was interested in soccer under the sun and during work hours. At some matches , 4,000 spectators were lost in huge arenas ; even the Bayern and Borussia Dortmund fans were mere red or yellow splashes of color against the backdrop of majestic architecture.

FIFA still mercilessly pulled off its stadium spectacle, complete with the anthem, banners, and the starting eleven running onto the pitch. The show must go on: DAZN broadcast the World Cup matches live 24/7 around the world and chose the camera angle to create a completely different impression. Because that's how FIFA reality was framed: everything was great, fantastic, phenomenal. That may even have been true for matches involving South American and Arab teams.

We Europeans must finally understand: While the top clubs from the Old World still dominate the sporting scene (three of the four semifinalists came from Europe), the world governing body is looking to the new markets. Boca Juniors and Flamengo Rio de Janeiro from South America, Inter Miami from the USA, Al-Hilal from Saudi Arabia—these are the teams that matter. And they love the duels with the establishment from England, Spain, and France. At least: more than we think.

We're welcome to doubt FIFA's narrative of two billion World Cup viewers worldwide, but hopefully my comments have reinforced the thesis at the beginning of this text: From FIFA's perspective, this Club World Cup is a success as a money-making machine and marketing tool. President Infantino is already familiar with the nitpicking from us Germans ; he doesn't care about us. He knows he'll never be able to convince us of his own and his expansion. Hence his focus on Saudi Arabia.

The sheikhs are financing the whole thing. That's why he's handing them the 2034 World Cup and, before that, the hosting of the next or the next Club World Cup. One hand washes the other, we know how it is. In ten years, we'll look back and realize: In 100 years of FIFA, more World Cups have taken place in Arab countries than in England, the motherland of football. No amount of shitstorm will help against that.