Congratulations to Raja Casablanca, whose 3-1 win over Ronaldinho’s Atletico Mineiro in Marrakech on Wednesday has earned them a match-up with Pep Guardiola’s Bayern Munich in the final of the 2013 FIFA Club World Cup.
The Moroccan side will be following a trail blazed by the magnificently-named Tout Puissant Mazembe Englebert, from the Congolese mining capital of Lubumbashi, who in 2010 became the first African team to contest a Club World Cup final, which they lost 3-0 to Italy’s Internazionale.
So does the second African finalist in four years signify that the tournament is starting to come of age in its tenth edition since 2000?
I’d be pleased to be proved wrong, but I have to say I remain profoundly sceptical on that score.
The way club football works, the vast majority of a) money and b) top talent gets sucked into Europe.
The proliferation of digital technology has helped the Premier League in particular, along with the top European clubs and four or five leading players, to develop quickly into global brands.
This means that when an individual gets a taste for football, whether they be a six-year-old kid or a wealthy potential investor, they are probably more likely to pick a big brand in preference to, or at the very least as well as, a local name than at any previous time in the sport’s history. And this is irrespective of where in the world they happen to be.
While this state of affairs persists, it is scarcely surprising that the only region of the world whose clubs have shown themselves capable of competing on a consistent basis with the European giants in recent times (and not so recent) is South America, with its boundless talent supply and irresistibly potent football culture.
For all Mazembe and Casablanca’s efforts – and the latter, let us remember, have had the advantage of playing in their home country – 18 of the 20 Club World Cup finalists to date, and still every winner, have come from Europe or South America.
It is easy to understand why world football’s governing body should feel the need to try and develop another money-spinning tournament to complement the FIFA World Cup, one of the planet’s two cast-iron quadrennial sporting blockbusters.
‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,’ runs the old farmers’ adage. Yet in FIFA’s 2007-10 cycle, the World Cup in South Africa accounted for 87% of its total revenue. Contrast this with the position of Michel Platini’s UEFA, which has its highly successful annual club competitions as well as the quadrennial, nation-against-nation European championship.
While the strategy of making itself less heavily dependent on one uncontestable mega-event is undoubtedly sound, however, I persist in thinking that in this case FIFA is backing the wrong horse.
For one thing, the Club World Cup is hardly money-spinning. FIFA’s most recent annual report puts revenue from it in 2012 at $25.4 million – and expenses at $24.346 million. “Revenue from the FIFA Club World Cup…was matched however by comparable costs,” as the document notes clearly enough.
For another, FIFA’s toe in the water of the club game places yet further demands on star players already facing daunting match and travel schedules.
Particularly in a World Cup year, when FIFA’s best interests are served by the game’s big names reaching the end of the European club season with enough fuel in the tank to weave their magic in Brazil, you have to wonder if this is sensible, though admittedly the Club World Cup is not the most onerous competition.
Plus, as argued above, there seems little reason to expect a significant and sustained narrowing in the ability range of those participating in the tournament any time soon.
Tellingly, in the year that Inter triumphed over Mazembe, an African player, Samuel Eto’o, the Italian club’s then Cameroonian star, won the Golden Ball.
Unless and until players of Eto’o’s stature have a realistic option to pursue their careers in their home continent, the Club World Cup seems destined to remain a lightweight competition.
In FIFA’s place, I would call time on this unsatisfactory excursion into club football and earmark more investment instead for another tournament that I think does have a big and exciting future: the Women’s World Cup.
David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938.