No, You Don't Need To Bother With The Club World Cup

Apparently it starts this weekend. There are better ways to fill your time.

FIFA's latest naked cash-grab and homage to the corruption gods begins this weekend, and that's the Club World Cup. At least, so I'm told. Betting against themselves that they can't oversaturate the US market, it's on these shores, running along the CONCACAF Gold Cup and the MLS/NWSL seasons. It's to the point where next summer's World Cup, far and away the most important competition, might leave everyone pretty damn weary of the sport and hassle. We might get there before it even starts.

Anyway, this tournament is complete horseshit, and here are some reasons why and why you don't need to pay attention.

It's completely made up.

Yes, any tournament in its first edition is by definition, "made up." But this one is especially made up. Inter Miami is in it for winning...what? The Leagues Cup? That's also a made-up tournament. Host? The whole thing isn't in Miami. They're in it because FIFA wanted Lionel Messi in it. Cristiano Ronaldo was nearly forced onto someone's roster at FIFA's behest so he could be in it. LAFC got into it because Leon got kicked out for...reasons.

This is FIFA's attempt to try and claw at some of the money that UEFA gets from the Champions League by trying to construct something similar, except it won't work. The Champions League makes sense and fits snugly (barely) into a normal season. This is a nothing.

I'm as big of a fan as anyone and I have no idea what qualified anyone to be in it. Nor do I fucking care. It all feels hand-picked. That makes it an invitational, and more arranged. Barf.

The actual soccer will almost certainly be garbage.

Whatever good teams are there, and there aren't that many, are already exhausted from their normal seasons. So FIFA is going to toss them into a competition they can't possibly care about all that much, which will also be played in scorching hot locales all over the country. If the pace of games hits "glacial" it'll be an upset. We can't expect players to give their all when it's 89 and humid so that they can overcome some Middle Eastern team they've never heard of. Especially if they have to play five or six or seven games.

FIFA upped the prize money to try and get clubs to care, but it's only the clubs who will care, because the players aren't going to see any meaningful portion of that money. You may have heard about the Seattle Sounders players being a tad grouchy about the added workload for unfair compensation. Shockingly, players aren't all that gung-ho about adding to their already impossible workload only to make other people richer than they already were.

Even if teams were 100% focused, a couple clubs are already under new managers for this, like Madrid, Inter, and Juventus. They'll be working out a fair amount of kinks. Expect some preseason-like hiccups.

It's evil.

Everything FIFA does is evil, so we generally accept that. Seeing FIFA president Johnny Baby cozy up to The Orange Fuckwit to try and boost the profile of this dreck, while knowing all the time the Orange Fuckwit has no idea what it is if he even knows what the sport is, isn't going to make anyone with any moral compass feel all that great about attending this or next summer's World Cup. At least the latter is the biggest sporting tournament in the world and we already made that deal with the devil.

But more specifically, this is simply too much to ask of players. While Liverpool supporters like me and Arsenal supporters very much not like me may grin at the handicap Man City and Chelsea will face at the start of the next Premier League season thanks to a summer of activity their rivals don't have, that doesn't salve much. It was already far too much for players to deal with an expanded Champions League, as well as all their international team commitments, combined with normal league duties, when they had just every other summer off. Now these players are going to get basically two and a half, three weeks off at most for three years in row. European-based players won't get a full summer of rest until 2027. It's just far too much.

Moreoever, this is only for those at the top of the pyramid. Fans were not asking for this, especially American ones (more on this in a second). Players didn't want it. The media didn't want it. There was no clamor for it, anywhere. This isn't settling some long burning question. One could see the argument for this kind of tournament in the women's game (though much smaller scale) given that there is a push-and-pull between Europe and the NWSL. There isn't on the men's side. Europe is the dominant force, and we're all basically fine with that.

It's insulting to the American fan.

It's already apparent very few people care, as FIFA has slashed prices to the point of being $4 a game for some packages. What FIFA was counting on, apparently, is that we rubes in our Uncle Sam hats would simply gobble up any ticket for games involving big name European teams or even games in the same tournament as big European teams because we don't know any better. We'll eat gruel if it's the only thing on offer, went the theory I'm sure.

European giants, and others, have been doing preseason tours to the US for 20 years now. Seeing Madrid or Man City arrive in this country isn't really a new thing for us. Dressing it up as a "real" competition instead of a preseason friendly isn't really fooling most of us, quite clearly. We know just as much as any fan in Spain or England that this is a whole heapin' helpin' of heavily sponsored bullshit. We watch the game, y'know.

There's also the need to keep the powder dry for next summer. I don't know how many fans out there can afford to get CWC tickets and then tickets for the World Cup next summer, but that list can't be as long as FIFA thought it was.

Everyone needs a break.

Look, it can be exhausting to just be a soccer fan. The Premier League season ended three weeks ago, and three weeks from now some teams will be back in preseason training. There's always something going on in the summer, usually an international tournament of some kind. If you pay any kind of attention to MLS or NWSL, there is no total break for our fandom. You have to make one.

That's usually in the odd-numbered summers. We get small intervals after World Cups and European Championships and Copa Americas. But in the other summers, there's a full reset. European seasons conclude at the end of May, we can mostly eschew the Gold Cup or whatever, and it's a full two months to relax or consume as much or as little of the domestic products as we like. FIFA is now trying to gobble that up. Fatigue is real, rest is a weapon.

Take the break anyway. This isn't worthy of your time.