Sunday, July 13

The 2025 Club World Cup featured expanded competition, diverse fan atmospheres and notable matchups, but also faced organisational and environmental challenges. A full review ahead of the 2029 edition.

In just under a month, the revamped Club World Cup — featuring more teams and a new format — managed to capture the hearts of football fans across the globe (but less in Europe). The tournament delivered memorable clashes, high-quality football, a resurgence of Brazilian pride, and more — proving that it offered much more than just the trophy lifted on Sunday.

However, not everything went smoothly. As the competition concludes, Sports Mole reflects on six key successes — and three major missteps — that FIFA should consider as it prepares for the next edition in 2029.

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Club World Cup: Highlights

Unprecedented opportunity to see the different types of cheering

The show at the World Cup was not only on the field. In the stands, we saw performances by different fans that made us come into contact with different cultures. The synchronized movement of the Japanese Urawa Reds at Lumen Field before the match against Inter was a spectacle in itself.

Incredible atmosphere from Urawa Red Diamonds supporters to welcome their team. This Club World Cup is introducing the world to some of the best fanbases out there, I love it. pic.twitter.com/hDAJCbyDk8

— American Ultras Talk (@usmntaut) June 21, 2025

For Boca fans to do this in a country that isn’t yours is…absolutely insane!

River Plate and Boca Juniors brought their fierce barras bravas atmosphere, igniting stadiums like no other fanbases. “It was undoubtedly one of the best atmospheres I’ve experienced in my career,” said Harry Kane after Bayern Munich’s match against Boca.

There is a reason Argentina (as a nation) always travel well to World Cups. Look at the passion for one club! Imagine all of the clubs united!

Argentine fans are different. pic.twitter.com/hZpVi5ZuS2

— EiF (@EiFSoccer) June 21, 2025

The Moroccans of Wydad Casablanca put on a pyrotechnic show that left the match with Juventus as if it were in the middle of a fog. Also Africans, the masses of Al Ahly and Esperance held small invasions and concerts in the stands.

Wydad Casablanca

The Brazilians were another chapter apart and reverberated around the world. Palmeirenses and tricolors made headlines for invasions in Times Square, in New York, and Alviverde had an incredible average attendance of more than 48 thousand. Fans of Botafogo and Flamengo were not left behind, also with huge audiences.

This gathering of fans from different continents, with different ways of supporting their clubs, was something unprecedented in world football because the World Cup does not mobilize fans like clubs, the true source of their passions.

All this overcoming several adversities: the delay in defining the host, made only in 2023, the doubt whether the new World Cup would work, the geographical distance and Donald Trump's turbulent immigration policy. There was also the absence of European fans that could make the party hotter, something that may change for next year.

Football of different levels and contexts facing each other

The old World Cup, with only two games for Europeans and South Americans, was a very small cut and made confrontations between the main forces of each continent extremely rare. As today's calendar does not support the number of excursions abroad that took place in the last century, football no longer had any idea of how these matches could be.

The Club Cup supplied this perfectly. In its surprising campaign, Fluminense faced two European teams that played in the last Champions League, the champion of the Conference League, two Asians and one African.

Format

FIFA took advantage of the World Cup format that marked the current generation between 1998 and 2022 and repeated it in the first edition of the club competition. 32 teams, eight groups, the two best advance and play single matches from the round of 16 to the final. Simple, direct and with a fair number of clubs.

This, however, may not last into 2029. Under pressure from European clubs, aiming at the money that the World Cup gives (more than $1bn, £740m this year), they want to increase to 48 participants, the same number as the competition between national teams in 2026, increased solely and simply by politicking of football's highest entity.

Games between alternative teams that seemed impossible to happen

In the same vein as duels of different levels come games that seemed impossible to happen in the past. Who would have imagined the South Africans of Mamelodi Sundowns overcoming the Koreans of Ulsan HD, 1-0, in a game that the winning side drew attention to for its differentiated style of play.

The trajectory of amateur Auckland City is another chapter to be mentioned. He took ten from Bayern Munich right away, plus six from Benfica in a row, but against Boca, he managed to tie, 1-1, thanks to a player who divides his time as a physical education teacher.

Innovation with arbitration

After another 64 games, you can count on your fingers the times when an offside took time to be analysed. FIFA used the famous semi-automatic offside technology, already used in much of Europe, which installs several cameras and a sensor on the ball to define the irregularity without having to draw lines as in Brazil.

The innovation to make this faster and more effective was the use of Artificial Intelligence to warn referees when the attacker passes the ball to a possibly offside player. As a result, decisions became almost instantaneous.

Another innovation was coupled to the communication headset of the main referees: a camera to bring immersion to the game and show replays of important moves. The image brings you as if you were inside the field and shows the intensity of modern football, exposing that decisions are made in milliseconds.

? REF CAM INSANITY ?

Arias bends it top bins off the free kick — and the ref had the perfect view ??

Watch the @FIFACWC | June 14 - July 13 | Every Game | Free | https://t.co/i0K4eUtwwb | #FIFACWC #TakeItToTheWorld #FLUUHD pic.twitter.com/OQWDNblCLn

— DAZN Football (@DAZNFootball) June 21, 2025

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Club World Cup: Key issues

Choice of venue and stadiums

Having the United States as the host of the competition was not by chance. The goal was for the competition to be a test before next year's World Cup, with five of the U.S. stadiums hosting the tournament, also played in Mexico and Canada.

This, however, does not erase the mistake of the venue – which can be considered for the two World Cups. The American summer is usually intense, either for high temperatures (criticism of the strong heat was constant) or rains (with that, strong winds and lightning storms).

While facing climatic adversity, the country has strict laws that prevent the practice of outdoor sports when a "severe weather alert" is issued by the national weather system. Six World Cup games were paralysed for this, with a negative highlight for Benfica vs Chelsea, paused for almost two hours and the target of much criticism.

Something that could have avoided so many "weather delays", as this climate pause is called in the US, would have been to choose arenas with coverage. FIFA, however, selected only one (Mercedes-Benz Stadium) with this structure out of the 12.

And the mistake in the choices was not only due to the issue of coverage. The organisation was not modest and selected eight stadiums with 65 thousand or more audience capacity. The result was a series of games with modest attendances and an average occupancy in the first phase of just over 50%.

Still on the stadiums, the lawn was a frequent issue. For example, the MetLife Stadium, which hosted the semifinals and the final, has synthetic grass, but for the club tournament a natural grass was installed on top, which generated criticism. Luis Enrique said that at Lumen Field the ball jumps like rabbits, while Niko Kovac said that the grass at MetLife was from golf.

Entry on the field equal to NBA

Being in the USA made FIFA inspired by another sport to seek innovation in the entry into the field of players. Instead of the characteristic two rows with the 11 players of each team with the referees, the organisation of the event opted for announcers in the stadiums calling athlete by athlete, as if it were in the NBA.

The idea, in addition to not having anything to do with football, did not have the support of the players to make it interesting. They did not make jokes when entering the field as basketball athletes do, and even caused a delay of a few minutes in the matches.

The way some Europeans treated the competition

Here the fault is not necessarily the main one of football's highest entity. It is true that he could have talked more with the European clubs to organize the tournament, have given something in relation to the reduction of dates for the rest of athletes and have made them part of the debate. But the postures of Porto, Chelsea (in the first round) and Borussia Dortmund play against the reputation of the new World Cup.

The Portuguese side, also due to technical and collective incompetence, fell in the first phase with horrible performances. The German club, complaining about almost everything that happened in the tournament, only lacked thanks for being eliminated by Real Madrid.

The Blues, along the way to the final, overcame a group stage in which they also added some complaints about the weather and pitch to a good level in the knockout stage.

The overall balance of the Club World Cup, however, is absolutely positive. One edition was enough to occupy a space in the heart of the football fan. The right choice of the 2029 host city and small adjustments in the organisation could make it even more epic and cause anxiety to happen every four years, as it is in the national team tournament.

This article was originally published on Trivela.

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