JONATHAN SHALLARD REPORTING —- Florida, home of family-fun theme park extravaganzas, is an appropriate home for FIFA president Gianni Infantino to launch his pet project of a contentious, widely-derided, redefined Club World Cup.

An argument can easily be made for a pinnacle event drawing in all the continental champions but the club world is about annual competition which instantly undermines any credibility in terms of football status for the eventual winners. The CWC 2015 version threatens to become of an oddity as the misbegotten and – happily – largely forgotten 2000 affair.

But money talks among the international club elite and Saudi money and American glitz talk in high ear-splitting decibels – just witness a fawning statement issued by the European Club Association on the eve of kickoff.

A 32-team tournament, kicked off with a deflating goalless draw in Hard Rock Stadium in Miami between Al Ahly and Leo Messi’s home-town Inter Miami; here is a far cry indeed from the early attempts at defining world club champions.

Infantino was elected in 2016 fresh out of UEFA finishing school to kick off a post-Sepp Blatter era. The cat sprang out of his bag the following spring after informal consultations with the Spanish and Italian leagues. His even then, was not far off the eventual mark: cancel the unloved December club cup, open a summer fixture slot by scrapping the Confederations Cup and create a 24-team four-week tournament in 2021, possibly in China, to delight sponsors and television.

All was well until a leak in Germany that Infantino might finance the project with a $25bn sale of FIFA’s media rights to backers tied in with Saudi Arabia and the Japanese investment conglomerate Softbank.

All change

FIFA Council put up a rare show of resistance then came the pandemic and everything changed. Kickoff was delayed to 2025 and the field expanded to 32 with a staging in the United States as a promotion for the FIFA World Cup itself. All good? Not yet. Ticket sales have been patchy and major broadcasters’ lack of interest has seen DAZN being dragged in with $1bn-worth of Saudi support to supply coverage.

All so unedifying and a far cry from the days of the first world club cups when football was the priority. The English amateurs of West Auckland laid claim to a first in 1909 and 1911. Brazil’s Palmeiras registered a 1951 home success in Rio de Janeiro in the Torneio Internacional de Clubes Campeões followed by the Pequeno Copa del Mundo in Caracas between 1952 and 1957. Then, in the early 1960s, came the all-too-brief heyday of world club competition.

UEFA general secretary Henri Delaunay suggested capitalising on the success of the fledgling European Cup by throwing down a gauntlet to the champions of Europe and South America in 1958. CONMEBOL enthusiastically launched the Copa Libertadores to enable the creation of the original world club cup in 1960.

Making a point

The rules of this Intercontinental Club Cup proved ultimately destructive since, up until 1968, winners were decided on points with a playoff if needed, not aggregate scores. A flying start was made by Real Madrid and Penarol. Madrid had just won their fifth European Cup in a row by demolishing Eintracht Frankfurt 7-3 while Penarol were inaugural Libertadores holders. The first leg, in rain-swept Montevideo, was goalless before Madrid triumphed 5-1 in the Estadio Bernabeu. Ferenc Puskas struck twice. A combined attendance of 200,000 saw the matches.

In 1961 it was Penarol’s turn to celebrate five goals against the emerging Portuguese eagles of Benfica. A solitary Mario Coluna goal in the first leg forced a decider which Penarol only just managed to win 2–1 at home against a Benfica bolstered by the young, freshly-arrived Eusebio.

Benfica represented Europe again in 1962 but this time ran headlong into Brazil’s brilliant Santos. Pele scored twice in a 3-2 win in Rio then followed up with a breathtaking hat-trick in a 5-2 triumph in Lisbon. Santos retained the trophy in 1963 but their victory over Milan in a turbulent playoff provided a nasty foretaste of trouble ahead with two expulsions and bitter Italian complaints about biased refereeing from Argentinian Juan Brozzi.

The next two editions were contested by Internazionale and Independiente with Luis Suarez, Sandro Mazzola, Giacinto Facchetti & Co winning each time. Penarol claimed revenge victory over Real Madrid in 1966 before it all started to go downhill with the bad-tempered farce between Argentina’s Racing Club and Celtic.

Chaos in El Cilindro

Feelings in Argentina were still running high over events at the 1966 World Cup. After a 1–0 Celtic win in Glasgow, the return in El Cilindro was chaotic. Celtic goalkeeper Ronnie Simpson was struck by a missile from the crowd before kick-off and had to be replaced. Racing won 2–1 to set up a decider, in Montevideo, which was doomed before it began. Celtic lost composure under extreme provocation and had four men dismissed. Racing had two men sent off but won 1–0.

Worse, the next South Americans – for three years running – were the anarchic supercynics of Estudiantes de La Plata. Their grim victory over Manchester United brought expulsions for Nobby Stiles in Argentina and for Raul Medina and George Best at Old Trafford. Milan came off even worse the next year but at least won after a savaging in Buenos Aires. Franco-Argentinian centre-forward Nestor Combin had his nose broken and was then briefly detained for missing military service.

Three Estudiantes players were imprisoned for shaming the nation but they did not learn the lesson. They lost again in 1970, to Feyenoord, whose bespectacled Joop van Daele had his glasses trodden into the pitch before scoring the winner. Wisely Ajax then refused to take the risk, setting a pattern for on/off participation by successive European champions.

Japanese sunrise

The event was dying on its feet until rescue from an unlikely direction – Japan. In 1980 the two-legged tie was replaced by a single game at the National Stadium in Tokyo at the behest of Japanese officials plotting an eventual bid for the World Cup finals. Toyota underwrote the costs as sponsor.

The South Americans were delighted. Their clubs have always set greater store by the world champion allure, none more impressive than Zico’s Flamengo against Liverpool in 1981. FIFA later took over the show with a mini tournament to curry political favour with the other four noisily envious confederations. Now the Club World Cup enters its brave new world – with as much negative publicity and gloomsaying prophesying as the ‘real’ World Cup itself in Qatar three years ago.

Remember that? Maybe. Maybe not. Now the world club wheel is being reinvented yet again over the next four weeks in the United States.

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