The Club World Championship is a Joke

[MHedges]

The Club World Championship has always bothered me. Not so much because we have never got to participate, but the entire format for the tournament is ridiculous.

This competition is supposed to determine who the best club team in the world is, but can you imagine if the world cup operated on such terms? Only the teams who won their regional domestic trophy being allowed to participate?

I suggest a total revamp of the competition, and model it after the world cup.

Every team in top flight football in the world can participate. Over the course of a year or so, each region would have a qualifying competition - exactly like is done for the international competitions. Because it would take so long, probably a couple years for qualification, we would have to figure out what to do with the champions league (scrap it? :D).

So over the course of the first year, you are trying to qualify, and over the course of the second year, much like the Champions League, we have a 32 team group stage. Over the second half of the year, we have a knockout stage, with the club world cup final taking place sometime late May.

If done properly, could turn into one of the higher watched programs across the world.

Thoughts?

[Ruh Buh Juh]

The only way this could work is to take away the Champions League and put this instead of it. Competing in both would kill nearly every team competing in the Champions League/Europa League.

Edited August 24, 2010 by Ruh Buh Juh

[The Moos]

I agree with RBJ.

There's already too many games being played so I can't see the point of adding more each season.

But I also agree that the Club World Championship is a bit of a joke. To me it's a bit like the Community Shield. Fun to win, but really means very little.

Some teams seem to pretend that winning it makes you ruler of the universe (idiots like Barcelona), but that's just moronic.

[Katon]

This competition is supposed to determine who the best club team in the world is, but can you imagine if the world cup operated on such terms? Only the teams who won their regional domestic trophy being allowed to participate?

I think that's called the Confederations Cup - and as long as you don't mind agreeing that the US was the second-strongest country in the world in summer 2009, the last couple have had relatively sensible results*.

Of course, the Confederations Cup does have a few advantages in that the best national teams are split across two continents in a way that the best club teams aren't and in that it takes the World Cup winner as well so it gets another strong team; put those together and the Confederations Cup gets three teams from Europe/South America, all of whom (apart from the occasional Greece) are somehow relevant to the 'best team in the world' conversation, while the club competition only gets one team from the pool of elite clubs (the CL winner, assuming it's not Liverpool), which means that one fluke result means a screwy winner instead of the Confederations Cup's traditional screwy runner-up. I don't see a way to significantly improve it without completely breaking the schedule, though.

*vague timeframe deliberately chosen to start just after the times Japan and Cameroon finished second at consecutive tournaments.

[The Machine]

I have no time for the World Cup Championship. It is a farce of tournament, which can only produce only winners from either Europe and South America every season.

[TheWestwayWonder]

Agree with others, doing this would have to come at the expense of the Champions League

But this idea intrigued me, and it reminded me (hopefully some of you video game junkies can back me up) of "build a tournament" on some of the FIFA games of a few years ago. Not sure if they have it on the new one, but it basically let the user create a leauge, trophy, venues, etc, and then select who would be in it. Of course, the practicality of doing such a thing is lost on a video game, but it was kinda cool to select the most famous clubs in the world to be in this league, and there was something really neat about having 38-48 fixtures with regular ties like CSKA v. Real Madrid, Sao Paolo v. Rangers, or Boca Juniors v. Newcastle

[MHedges]

I would have no problem doing away with the champions league to replace this.

The big problem would be flight times. Flying over to the USA to play the LA Galaxy midweek could be kind of rough.