Teething Troubles

Two days into the Club World Cup, it's time for sweeping judgements. Worthy addition to the calendar or shameful vanity project that will lead to the apocalypse?

And so it begins, this weird artificial Club World Cup, a venture that seems so ill-conceived in so many ways that it’s almost impossible to know which thread to pull on, and yet one that might somehow be the future. One of the many problems with being 48 – as well as the random aches and pains, the creeping interest in ornithology and the awareness you’re probably past halfway – is the nagging thought that you might be becoming a conservative. Do I dislike this thing because it is shit, or do I think it is shit because it is new and I am old? Which leads to the danger of second-guessing yourself.

It’s bad to be reflexively hostile to new things, but so is being reflexively hostile to hostility to new things. Always there’s that question: if I’d been around in 1930, would I at first have hated the World Cup? If I’d been around in 1955, would I have thought the European Cup a needless money-making jaunt that was guaranteed to exacerbate pre-existing financial divides within the game?

Neither World Cup nor European Cup got off to flying starts. There was no opening game as such at the 1930 World Cup in Uruguay, in part because the Estadio Centenario, the centrepiece of the tournament, wasn’t quite finished. So France 4-1 Mexico at the Estadio Pocitos and USA 3-0 Belgium at the Parque Central, both smaller stadiums in Montevideo, kicked off roughly simultaneously. 4,444 saw Lucien Laurent score the first Word Cup goal, for France, but there were more than 18,000 watching the US. The Uruguayans were not particularly impressed. The France game, said El Día, “completely disappointed the public” while El Diario dismissed the US as “monotonous and sometimes childish” despite their win.

And this was a tournament beset by late withdrawals, some very low attendances (Romania 3-1 Peru officially drew 2500, but most seem to think the truer figure was around 300), occasionally bizarre refereeing and, on one game, a penalty spot marked at 16 rather than 12 yards from the goal. Yet the World Cup went on to prosper.

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On It Was What It Was, the football history podcast, we remember Zambia’s tear-jerking Africa Cup of Nations victory of 2012 and consider the impact of the change in the offside law 100 years ago. Listen here.

On Libero, we discuss the Club World Cup and what it really means, while later this week we’ll be probing the transfer industry. Listen here.

Issue 57 of The Blizzard is out now, featuring Ivica Osim and the death of Yugoslavia, football in Cornwall, how punk was shaped by terrace chants, the development of the Bhutanese league and the Liverpool striker who lost a leg and became a stunt diver. Buy here.

And, ever wanted the history of football tactics explained in one gorgeous poster? Or the Premier League as Fibonacci sequence? Then you’re in luck. Buy here.

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The European Cup was also blighted by arguments over who should be involved. Chelsea, as English champions, were forced to withdraw, while Hibernian, who had finished fifth in Scotland, were invited ahead of the champions Aberdeen, apparently because they had floodlights. The first round began with a 3-3 draw between Sporting and Partizan in front of 30,000, but took 80 days to complete, the first leg of the first quarter-final taking place on the same day as the second leg of the last first-round game. Yet for all the problems and doubts, the football was undeniably good. Only 3500 saw Djugården 0-0 Gwardia Warsaw in the first round, but by the latter stages crowds of 30,000 were standard while Real Madrid were pulling in over 100,000.

So let’s try to judge the first five games of the Club World Cup on their merits. The crowds have been nowhere near as bad as it was feared they may be. A near capacity 61,000 for the opening game and over 80,000 for Paris Saint-Germain against Atlético are impressive and if the 21,000 for Bayern against Auckland City sounds low, at least it was in a 26,000-capacity stadium in Cincinnati so it didn’t look awful. The other two games were played in front of stadiums roughly half-full, but still drew 76,000 spectators between them. Even if it took the full weight of Fifa’s marketing machine and some extreme discounts – tickets for the opener were going at five for $20 – that ensured embarrassment was avoided.

It's probably not ideal that two of the first five games finished goalless given those in the US who are sceptical of football tend to complain about its low-scoring nature (which is, of course, its great strength, allowing a weaker team on occasion to thwart a stronger one), but neither was a terrible game. Palmeiras against Porto, in fact, was pretty good, even if there must be some concern that probably the best of the Brazilian sides couldn’t beat one of the lesser European teams in the competition, even with the advantage of being in the idle of their domestic season.

Paris Saint-Germain’s 4-0 win over Atlético was more comfortable than 2-0 after 87 minutes may suggest but it had the feel of an early Champions League game, the European champions overcoming decent but ultimately inferior opposition. Botafogo’s 2-1 win over Seattle Sounders was engaging, of note chiefly for the fact the MLS side lost. There’s no disgrace in that but in conjunction with Inter Miami’s disjointed display against Al-Ahly in the opener, it does raise a concern about the performance of the MLS sides; it’s probably not good for football in the US if they all struggle.

Bayern’s 10-0 win over Auckland City, though, is a huge problem for the tournament’s credibility. There has never been a 10-goal margin in the men’s World Cup finals. It’s hard to square such a one-sided contest with the claim that this tournament is somehow about the cream of the elite. Oceania may find its guaranteed slot in jeopardy for 2029.

But perhaps the most striking element of Sunday’s programme was that the US men’s national team was also in action. They at least put an end to a run of four successive defeats with a 5-0 win over Trinidad & Tobago in the Concacaf Gold Cup, but there were only 12,610 there to see it.

Most troublingly of all, though, a dozen players who were in the preliminary squad for the Gold Cup were not in the squad for the finals, seemingly because of their involvement in the Club World Cup. Previously, Fifa has always been strict about preserving the sanctity of the dates set aside for international fixtures: clubs have to release players in accordance with the Fifa calendar. Yet now it’s a Fifa club tournament, it seems that suddenly the regulations are flexible after all. That feels like a significant breach in what Tariq Panja referred to on Libero as “football’s social contract”. When European clubs are asked to give up players for the Africa Cup of Nations this winter, why would they not point to the Club World Cup and ask what the difference is?

That failure to consider consequences has characterised the tournament. It’s not so much the competition itself; football tends to find a way to be watchable. It’s the damage that Fifa is doing going forward, in terms of player welfare, the unbalancing of leagues with the distribution of vast sums of cash and, perhaps, in undermining international football.

So far, the competition has been OK. Crowds have been fine, the level of play has been fine. Football is football; the storylines will take hold. There will be narratives and intrigue and drama. But try as I might to accept it, it’s impossible not to look at this Club World Cup, the populist vehicle of a populist Fifa president played in the US under a populist president, and not see a reckless gamble that could have dire consequences.

Football has always been a mischievous sport, capricious and given to ironic unintended consequences. But if Fifa powering on with a club tournament with Saudi backing ends up undermining the international game just before the World Cup winds up in Saudi Arabia, that might be its bitterest joke yet.