Australia aims to follow US in ‘building’ Fifa’s Club World Cup
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Australia's co-hosting of the 2023 Women's World Cup proved to be a huge success.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
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MIAMI – Australia’s football chief James Johnson believes his country can help Fifa turn its new Club World Cup into a global success as he seeks to get in the driving seat for the 2029 bidding process.
Australia in October opted not to bid for the 2034 World Cup
But Johnson, chief executive officer of Football Australia, believes the new 32-team Club World Cup, which will debut in the United States in 2025, would more than compensate for missing out on the game’s biggest event.
“I’m very excited by this,” Johnson said in an interview on Monday, ahead of this week’s Soccerex conference in Miami.
“There’s an opportunity there, 32 teams, 64 matches, played over one month. We’ve got the biggest teams in the world coming together and fighting it out to be world champion of the club football. It’s extremely interesting,” he said.
The current Club World Cup, an annual affair, features just seven clubs from six confederations and has struggled to grab attention.
Johnson believes though that once the new quadrennial tournament, with 12 European clubs and six teams from South America, has made an impact in the United States, its prestige will be transformed.
“We can’t wait to see what happens here in the United States in 2025. We believe that we can help build that competition, take it to a new level, like what we saw with the Women’s World Cup in Australia,” he added.
European clubs, fans and broadcasters have shown little interest in the old Club World Cup, but Johnson believes that will change with the chance to compete in a full tournament outside their traditional markets.
“Australia is a great market for European clubs. Every summer, European summer, we have big clubs coming to Australia,” he said.
“We know that we can fill stadiums. We never have problems with selling tickets in any sport. We’re also in a great region for broadcast. It’s an area of the world that is going to work for the clubs in terms of their brand.
“I think having an edition both in America and then in Asia, you’ll be able to cross-promote and I think it would be a nice package to kick off the first two editions of the Club World Cup,” he added.
Johnson said Fifa’s bidding process for the 2034 World Cup “came around a little bit quicker than what we were anticipating, so that was a little bit of a surprise. But it wasn’t the reason we opted not to do it.”
Instead, he says, the chance to follow-up on the success of the Women’s World Cup,
