The Ephemeric

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.