Cloak-and-dagger games continue to cloud Fifa’s Club World Cup

As European footballers take their post-season vacations, with the continent’s southern beaches providing mental and physical havens, there comes the realisation that the club game will go global this summer.

Looming on June 14 is the Club World Cup’s opener between Egypt’s Al Ahly and Inter Miami of the United States as Africa takes on North America.

By little coincidence, the latter team feature Lionel Messi, who celebrates his 38th birthday during Fifa’s new month-long showpiece.

Messi’s presence came via spurious means, his club granted entry after winning the 2024 Major League Soccer (MLS) Supporters’ Shield – awarded to the team with the best overall record during the regular season.

That Miami bombed out of the subsequent play-offs and eventual MLS champions Los Angeles Galaxy will be absent is just one wrinkle in the make-up of the 32-team Club World Cup.

Red Bull Salzburg, 34th in this season’s 36-team Champions League, winning just a single match, take their place by virtue of a complicated coefficient which restricted countries to two entries.

The Austrian side qualified by being the ninth-best team over four years of the Champions League, after featuring in the group stages up to 2023-24 and making the round of 16 in 2022.

There will be 12 European teams in the US and yet this season’s champions of England, Liverpool, and of Spain, Barcelona, will not be present, unable to take advantage of the US$125 million (S$161.3 million) prize bounty on offer for the winners.

For a club like Chelsea, teetering financially and involved in all sorts of financial chicanery to pass profit and sustainability regulations, such a bonus competition is welcome. They qualify by dint of winning the Champions League under the previous ownership of Roman Abramovich in 2021.

As curious as all that might be, there should be no confusion over the point of this competition – Fifa’s attempt to gain hold of the club game from Uefa and maybe Conmebol, the South American equivalent. Why? Simply, the club game is where the real money is, as Fifa president Gianni Infantino is all too aware.

That the trophy has been sat in US President Donald Trump’s Oval Office show the hard politicking that Infantino involves himself in.

That the broadcast partner will be Dazn, a British streaming platform which just happen to have had a recent US$1 billion Saudi investment, news of which arrived around the time Saudi Arabia was awarded the 2034 World Cup, is little coincidence.

Infantino has also revealed that his brainchild may feature a special guest, Cristiano Ronaldo, available to the highest bidders – or any bidders – who want the 40-year-old to play for them.

Ronaldo’s status with his Saudi club Al-Nassr is unclear. That Ronaldo’s availability was revealed by Infantino while appearing on YouTuber IShowSpeed’s channel when he refuses interviews with mainstream media only adds to the circus quality of this summer event.

Perhaps the world is ready for a global club event, and there would be many takers for fixtures like, say, Real Madrid versus Boca Juniors, but it may take some time for the suspicions of motives and machinations to wear off.