james debate
james debate

Friday, 18 July 2025

The Club World Cup: was it a success?

Football fans this summer will have been treated to a most unusual spectacle. It had all the hallmarks of an elite football competition, yet with the unmistakable extravagance that one might expect from the Super Bowl. This was the inaugural* edition of FIFA's new flagship competition, the Club World Cup. The concept is ambitious: one competition to rule them all. A meeting of the finest clubs from all over the world, competing for the number one prize in club football. But not everyone has been happy with this new addition to the calendar, and indeed many have responded with strident criticism or even mockery. So now that the competition has concluded and the dust has settled, what can we say? Was this a success?


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Running for just under a month, the Club World Cup has been envisaged as the ultimate event of club football, a coming together of the very finest club teams from all over the globe to battle it out for the biggest prize of them all. It's essentially a club football equivalent of the famed World Cup which takes place every four years.

Longtime football fans will have spotted that, while FIFA have taken to referring to this as the inaugural Club World Cup, it isn't really a new competition. The Club World Cup has existed in some form since the year 2000. But until now, it has been a largely forgotten and inconsequential date in the calendar, one competed by a very small number of clubs, just the winners of the previous year's continental competitions, and one severely dominated by the European Champions.

Indeed, there remains even now some ambiguity as to how exactly this new expanded form of the competition fits in with the history. FIFA certainly seem to be referring to this as an entirely new thing, with the winners of the old competition now officially branded as winners of the "Intercontinental Cup", but on the other hand most media outlets and the clubs themselves seem to be viewing this as a simple continuation of the old format. Bizarre and confusing, and something which may yet develop further if FIFA ever decides to provide clarification.

Personally, I think FIFA's view makes the most sense. This new format is so drastically changed, the scope and scale so vastly increased, that it may as well be a new competition. From FIFA's perspective, the stated intent is to make football even more of a global sport, breaking or at least softening the dominance of Europe at the club level, and bringing greater focus to the biggest clubs from elsewhere. For the participating clubs comes financial incentive, with an astonishing $1billion prize pot up for grabs and, at least hypothetically, the prestige of winning the "biggest" prize in world football.

Which brings us to one of the first criticisms that has been levelled at this competition. Is this really a competition of the world's best clubs? After all, this year's Club World Cup featured neither the current English champions Liverpool, nor the runner up, Arsenal, but does have room for Red Bull Salzburg, Mamelodi Sundowns, semi-professional clubs like Auckland City FC, and Inter Miami, a club which has ostensibly won nothing and qualified solely for the sake of allowing the greatest player of all time, Leo Messi, to play in the competition.

The criteria for qualification has been lampooned for its labyrinthine opacity. Now switched from an annual event to once every four years, the champions of the previous four years of continental competitions are admitted. This much is clear. But the remaining places are filled by a somewhat controversial ranking system, with myriad tiebreakers and national limitations (hence why Liverpool and Arsenal were excluded, due to Chelsea and Manchester City having already qualified by way of being European champions). Making matters even more confusing is that different confederations were allowed to devise their own ranking systems, making for a strangely inconsistent set of rules that govern qualification.

Certainly, the structure of this competition still leaves much to be desired, and that is a very valid criticism. Some elements were borderline farcical, such as the measures pursued in order to contrive an excuse for Miami and Messi to appear, a trick they unsuccessfully attempted to pull for Cristiano Ronaldo as well. It's this approach to governance that creates the biggest problem for this competition. Some countries may be used to sports which are more spectacle than real competition, but this understandably puts off many fans from countries with a more traditional footballing history.

This spectacle-driven approach permeates throughout the competition at the moment, from the WWE-style player-by-player walk-ons before each match, to the lengthy half-time shows and mid-match advertising. It may well work for bringing in new fans, the type of consumer who may not ordinarily follow the sport, but for long time football fans, it makes it much harder to take the competition seriously.

In the end, is there something here, or is it just a bit of fluff? For all its structural and tonal flaws, ultimately we still ended up with a largely credible array of top clubs, including the likes of Bayern, PSG, Inter, as well as the top South American clubs. It may not be perfect, but at least conceptually it lived up to the promise of allowing the world's elite clubs to battle it out.

In footballing terms, the Club World Cup mostly delivered. You had the odd joke of a game such as Bayern thrashing Auckland 10-0, or Manchester City beating Al-Ain 6-0. But you also had some genuinely delightful and surprising contests, such as Al-Hilal's impressive 1-1 draw with Real Madrid and Botafogo beating the European Champions PSG 1-0. Europe's clubs are widely viewed as the biggest in the world, but it was clear that most of the others deserved to be here and gave us a real competition.

This is not surprising. This is football. The reason we all love this sport is precisely because anything can happen on the day. The smaller clubs came to this competition up for a fight, sensing an opportunity to appear on a bigger stage, and many of them took advantage.

Then there's the final. In which London's own Chelsea FC shocked the world by demolishing the European champions PSG 3-0. PSG swept aside the likes of Bayern Munich and Real Madrid, just one month after thrashing Inter in the Champions League final. The French club have been hyped as the greatest club in world football today, and perhaps the greatest since Pep Guardiola's legendary Barcelona side. They went into this match against unfavoured Chelsea FC, a club that has struggled in recent years following a change in ownership. They must have been expecting a coronation, rather than a match. But Chelsea's historic awesomeness is not the subject of this article, so I will leave it there. Needless to say, Chelsea are world champions. Up the blues.

So for whatever flaws the Club World Cup possesses, I think it is still fair to call it an entertaining competition of football. But what of FIFA's grand ambitions for this to be the absolute pinnacle of the club game? Can they simply conjure up a competition from thin air and have it be as prestigious and worthy as the Champions League or World Cup? The answer to this is... no, not really. Those competitions have decades of history and significance which serve as the foundation for that reputation. For all FIFA's bluster, they can't just magic that out of thin air and expect the footballing world to treat it with the same level of seriousness.

That is not to say that I don't think it will ever get to that level, however. While for now, the Club World Cup is likely to remain something of an alien anomaly in world football, a bit of a Hallmark-contrivance of a football competition, I do think it probable that one day we will view it with the same reverence as the world's top prizes. I think this for one simple reason: money.

In reality, much of this comes down to money. By marketing this as a less Eurocentric, more global event, FIFA is better positioned to sell to the very large Asian and American markets, and bring in eye-wateringly lucrative sponsorship deals. In that sense, it is hard to argue that this endeavour has not been a success. This competition has been broadcast all over the world, and generated massive sponsorship revenue. That FIFA were able to offer an astonishing $1billion prize pot speaks to the economic viability of the concept, and while more than $100million of this was awarded to the eventual winner, much of the remaining pot was spread amongst the other competitors.

This is the simple truth of it. If there's enough of a financial incentive, clubs will play for this competition. Right now, Chelsea are likely to see a huge windfall from the prize money and the brand recognition from achieving this victory on such a global stage. Like it or not, in the modern era that is what clubs are looking for, and if they don't yet, then they will all eventually want a piece of this for themselves.

Most of the criticisms discussed so far are ideological, or sporting in nature. For some, they may not be hugely significant, and can always be tweaked and improved going forward. But there remains one crucial issue that is hugely problematic with the introduction of this new competition: the physical impact on players.

The football calendar is already way too long, with too many games. As it stands, these off-years between the major international competitions serve as crucial rest periods for players. With that rest period now taken away, we are going to see an impact. This will result in more injuries, it will result in shorter careers for some players. At the end of the day, there's only so much we can physically demand from a person, and at some point that limit will be met, with potentially tragic consequences.

So what can be done to help? It's not clear, but I think a good starting point would be to rework the football calendar, at least in Club World Cup years. A winter break surely has to come back into discussion.

Ultimately, I enjoyed this Club World Cup more than I expected. Would I still be saying this if Chelsea had not won? Possibly not, but regardless of my opinion, I do think there is a future for this competition. I think there are still significant issues with this as a competition, from its sporting integrity and merit, to the fixation on spectacle, to player welfare. I would like to see them tighten up some of the rules, tone down some of the extravagance, not shoehorn Donald Trump into the final. I would also like to see a reworking of the football calendar in Club World Cup years to try and make the physical demands on players less extreme than it currently is, including potentially a winter break. Will we get any of that? Who knows. Either way, this is here to stay. If you haven't been paying attention until now, you'll probably need to start doing so.














 

Thursday, 10 July 2025

Trump Tariffs: the what and the why

If you watch the news with any kind of regularity, you will have seen the world abuzz with one thing. The Trump tariffs are a matter of such broad, global consequence that they have the potential to not just affect the American domestic economy, but upend that of the world at large. Despite their import, there has been a great deal of confusion as to what exactly this all means. Misinformation is flying in both directions, not helped by a news media that increasingly seems ill-equipped to brief the public on anything but the most cursory facts. With Trump's big tariff deadline being passed and extended on July 2nd, now seems like a good opportunity to finally get into this: what are the Trump tariffs, why are they being implemented, and how does this affect the rest of us?


trump tariffs reality truth arguments pro con for against benefits purpose why
There seems to be a widespread misunderstanding amongst the public as to what exactly a tariff does and what purpose it serves. So let's start with the basics. A tariff is a fee the Government (could be a national Government, a supranational Government, or customs union) charges to buy and sell goods outside the domestic market. It is essentially a form of tax on cross-border transactions, most commonly imports.

What is the purpose of a tariff? Generally it's to protect local industry. Businesses may seek to import goods and services from elsewhere if it is cheaper, but in doing so they may weaken the domestic providers of those goods and services. By charging a tariff, you are effectively making the import more expensive, and thus less advantageous, in the hopes that without this benefit the business may choose to do business domestically instead.

In general tariffs have become less ubiquitous in our modern globalised economy. The prevailing liberal mindset in recent decades has settled on allowing the free-market to do its thing with as few limitations as it is responsible to allow. That being said, tariffs are still commonly used for strategic purposes to protect vital domestic industries, for example in the military and national security sectors, agriculture, and to protect infant industries and promote national development of key technologies.

What is notable and remarkable about the Trump tariffs is the scale and scope. He is proposing widespread tariffs on broad sectors and at punitively high rates. These are tariffs used to a degree rarely seen in the developed world during the postwar era, and their impact could be devastating to the global economy.

So why is the administration doing this? It's a difficult question to approach simply because there is so much spin, so much misinformation. Both sides are resorting to highly simplified arguments that play well on TV, but that don't really capture the reality of what is going on or why. So let's tackle this in stages. We'll start with the surface-level arguments for and against, the types of discussions you will probably have seen bounced around on cable news over the past several months. Then we can look at some of the deeper arguments, and finally come to the hard truth about the end game of this policy, and what the ultimate result is likely to be.

Depending on who you speak to, these tariffs are either economically illiterate drivel that will crash the global economy, or a necessary action to level the playing field and bring jobs back to America. The truth is more nuanced than you might think. 

The superficial arguments
Suffice it to say, tariffs, and indeed economics as a whole, is a topic with which the general public is only fleetingly well versed. I say that with absolutely no disrespect, economics is a dense and complex subject. Most people are reliant on the explanations they hear from the media and from the Government, and in general these have been of pretty poor quality.

The most common explanation you will hear from the administration is that these tariffs are about other countries paying their fair share, an implication that these tariffs are fees that other countries will need to pay, and that America as a whole will reap the profits from these payments. That, of course, is pretty much nonsense. Tariffs are a tax on the American people. We pay those fees, not the other country. If an American company wants to buy a product from China for $10, and the Trump administration wants to add a 10% tariff on that import, then that product now costs $11. China still gets its $10, the American business pays the extra dollar.

This is sadly pretty typical of what we have seen from Trump's two administrations. Quick, snappy sound bites with little regard as to whether they reflect reality in any way. All positive marketing spin, without any acknowledgement of the downsides.

But I would argue that the opposition's counter-arguments are also wide of the mark. They quite rightly point out that the above explanation is nonsense, but they typically leave it at that. For the sake of simplicity they fire back that a tariff is a tax on the American people, and thus inherently bad in all its forms. There is some truth to this, but it's not the whole truth. As mentioned above, tariffs are and have been used even before Trump came along. They do serve some purpose. But as we've seen, there's little place for nuance in politics these days. Which is why we will now get into some of the deeper arguments.

The deeper arguments
So what are the real arguments for and against tariffs, free from the political spin?

We've already touched on some of this in the preamble to this article, but nowadays tariffs may be used to protect vital industries and ensure that some level of domestic activity exists for strategic or security purposes, even where it is not the most economically efficient.

Tariffs had previously been used more widely prior to the globalisation boom of the late 20th Century, and there is a school of thought that we should move back in that direction. The logic goes that globalisation effectively incentivises the outsourcing of certain types of manual labour, specifically manufacturing and other forms of work that require less formal education, and so can easily be performed in less wealthy nations at lower cost. But we still have those lower-education strata manual labourers in this country, and if we're outsourcing their jobs then they will struggle. 

This is the central dilemma and crux of the anti-globalism ideology. Getting too much into the possible solutions for this problem is beyond the scope of this article, but in the context of tariffs, the argument would be that by making it more expensive to hire labour outside the country, you disincentivise this behaviour and businesses will hire locally instead.

While this is true, it comes with a lot of problems. Proponents of this idea are essentially calling for a return to the more-protectionist economic policy of yesteryear, a nostalgia-tinged time where the nation was prosperous and the lower and middle classes could make enough money to get by. The trouble is, these depictions of the past leave out a lot of crucial context. For starters, poverty was actually much higher back then, and the nation's economy as a whole was a lot smaller. One could argue that the wealth may have been more equitably distributed to all people back then, but the reality is that it's just certain very specific sectors being squeezed right now. The country as a whole is more wealthy now than it has been at any other point in time. That prosperity may not be felt by certain segments of the population, but most classes of people will feel that benefit. Unfortunately, that greater prosperity is directly linked to the very thing these people are trying to reverse, the lower cost of doing business afforded by globalism. 

The example often brought up in the media is Apple. An American company that does most of its manufacturing overseas in places like China where labour is cheaper. Apple is a big, wealthy company, so theoretically they could shrug off the squeeze of tariffs and build their next factory in the US. The problem is that most companies are not Apple. The reason the economy is so much bigger now than it ever has been is because the barrier of entry for people to do business is so low. Most businesses are small or medium sized enterprises, and they may not be able to absorb the same economic shock that a company like Apple can handle.

So while, yes, you could theoretically make it more expensive to do business abroad and disincentivise sending jobs overseas, doing so is going to squeeze these small businesses and ultimately shrink the economy. The result is that more people are likely to end up less well off than they are now. It also won't do much to address the underlying issues causing the economic distress. From a coal-miner's perspective, the matter might seem as simple as giving him a job, but there's a reason why that doesn't work economically any more without intervention. The world has changed, the solution is that wealthier nations need to get better at training a workforce for a modern economy. The current status quo, letting those left behind workers suffer quietly, is unsustainable, but so too is trying to grant them a temporary reprieve by financially doping their industrial sector. The genie won't go back in the bottle.

Logically, your next thought might be 'Well why is the Trump administration doing this then? Why aren't they reaching the same conclusions as you?' The answer is that, actually, they probably are. There's nothing controversial or unorthodox about what I have written above. Whatever you may think of the Trump administration, his economic advisors are not idiots. They know full well that implementing this extreme protectionist policy will likely provide, at best, only a temporary boost to certain demographics, the benefit of which would probably be offset by the damage done to everyone else. So then why press on with it? It's time to look at the hard truth of the Trump tariffs, and shed some light on a core aspect of Trump's leadership style.

The hard truth
Here's the truth about the Trump tariffs: he knows that this kind of extreme protectionist policy isn't going to benefit anyone, least of all Americans, in the long run. He's talking a big game drawing on the nostalgia of an idealised bygone time, and demonising the easy targets as an ill to be cured by drastic action, but in reality it's all for show.

What Trump is doing here is fairly transparent for anyone that has followed his administrations closely and become accustomed to how he gets things done. This whole song and dance is little more than brinkmanship with the rest of the world. Trump is betting that the American economy is so massive, so significant, so crucial to the global economy and the specific economies of other trading partners, that whatever damage these tariffs inflict upon America will be inflicted on those other countries even more so. He's betting that the risk of losing American trade will prove to be such an existential threat to the leaders of other countries, that those leaders will simply offer concessions and more favourable trade terms in order to avoid their implementation. He's probably right.

Honestly, I don't think this style of foreign policy is necessary. I don't think it does much to address the most significant economic issues facing America, and certainly does little to help those struggling economic classes to which his protectionist arguments are addressed, but he's also not wrong. America is just that powerful economically, and he probably can extract economic benefits from other countries through this strategy, extreme though it may be.

This really gets at the core of Trump and how he works. We've seen this playbook before. Noise and chaos, convince the other side that you are irrational and dangerous, force them to the negotiating table just to avoid the risk. It's over the top, but it can work. The problem with this is twofold.

First, and most significant, this administration just hasn't shown itself to be all that competent at negotiation. This week's deadline had been intended as a line in the sand. The expectation was that around 100 new trade deals would be signed by this date, and thus the tariffs could be averted. As of the time of writing, Trump has only managed to reach 3 new trade deals. For whatever else you may think of Trump and his policies, he just hasn't ever been that effective a President. A lot of bluster with little to show for it. This kind of tactic requires a deftness and cunning that Trump's administrations simply haven't demonstrated. With each passing deadline Trump's threat is taken a little less seriously, and his leverage decreases. He can only hope that the gulf in negotiation position is such that he can still scare his opposite number into submission despite these setbacks.

The second issue is, frankly, corruption. Another core attribute of Trump's administrations has been the extent to which he uses his position to benefit himself or his allies both economically and politically. We saw it in his first term when he attempted to bribe Ukraine into helping him win re-election by threatening to withhold military aid, an act for which he was ultimately impeached. We're already seeing it again with these tariffs, with the news this week that Trump was threatening to impose tariffs on Brazil in retaliation for the rightful criminal prosecution of former Brazilian leader, and Trump ally, Jair Bolsonaro. This has always been an issue with Trump, even to the extent that he may be able to get a win from something, it's not always his intention to use this to benefit the country or American people. Sometimes it is purely for self-interested reasons, and unfortunately that may well be the case here.

I think that about sums up the topic. I hope this has been a useful primer as to the subject of tariffs, the arguments for and against, why they aren't as stupid as Trump's opponents would have you believe, but also why there's genuine doubt as to whether we'll actually see any kind of benefit. We'll see how it turns out, but for what it's worth my own view is that I've had enough of this shtick. 










 

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