Not for me Clive

Clive Tyldesley's weekly cancel of someone or something he's just not having!

If Gianni Infantino thought Manchester City and Chelsea would showcase the merits of his latest brainwave at the weekend, he had another thing coming to him. Football is tired. Tired of the fixture treadmill, tired of the expense, tired of him.

I don’t know Gianni and that’s fine by me and most probably him too. But I do know that FIFA’s Club World Cup is a tournament too far. If the City players are struggling to find the energy to chase the latest young upstarts to usurp their serene dominance, it could just be the thought of their game with Juventus in the Camping World Stadium, Orlando five months from now. June 26^th. Kick-off 3pm. 32 degrees Celsius. 60% humidity. I get cramp just typing it.

City’s dramatic downturn might just be a cry for help. Nobody likes to hear a millionaire complaining of fatigue but bulging 9-and-a-half year contracts don’t massage the muscles. The victory over Chelsea was curative, the game became exciting, but the quality was low for me, Clive. I don’t think the long balls that produced the decisive goals were Pep master-strokes, but more a case of needs must. If Guardiola’s decorated players are weary now, how much will they have left to give in the Florida swamp heat next summer?

The Club World Cup is in the USA for a reason. Just like the international World Cup is heading to Saudi Arabia for a reason. There is gold in them there hills and Gianni’s rehearsed smile widens at the very ka-ching of new fields to be mined. When City and Chelsea met in Columbus, Ohio last August, 70 thousand fans paid to see a glorified pre-season friendly… paid to see Wilson-Esbrand, O’Reilly, Susoho, Mfuni, Fatah, Ndala and Oboavwoduo help put Chelsea to the sword. The US soccer audience are still gagging to see the famous franchises that NBC and CBS stream into their lives on a weekly basis, but they may just become a little disillusioned if they’re not seeing the best of the best. And so might we.

If Infantino is at all interested in my advice amidst the wisdom he is absorbing from his photo-opportunity tete-a-tetes with Donald Trump and Mohammed bin Salman, it would be to concentrate on delivering a 2026 World Cup to wow the Americans and go easy on promising much beyond a dry-run this coming summer. The tiptoe football being played in too many major international tournament games is a debilitating hangover from the excesses of the club binge that precedes them each spring. Gianni’s American conquest needs rave reviews next year. It’s got to be box office.

Soccer is not yet preaching to the converted in the USA. December’s Forbes List of the 50 Most Valuable Sports Clubs in the world featured only 7 from the most beautiful game. Real Madrid were ‘our’ market leader at 13^th, many millions of bucks behind the Dallas Cowboys and the Golden State Warriors. City came in 32^nd, Chelsea nowhere. The competition for America’s sporting attention and affection is at Logan Roy intensity.

Interest in broadcasting the Club World Cup to the world’s tablets and tellys was low enough to prompt Infantino to convene an emergency charm offensive last September. It produced only a $1 billion deal with serial streamers DAZN – a figure roughly equivalent to their operating losses. Rumours of a Saudi interest in pumping some oil money into DAZN are suspiciously rife. As suspicious as stories that Manchester City are using their influence to try to help FIFA sell the competition to the broadcasters. That would almost be like investing directly in boosting your own revenue, wouldn’t it?

Ferran Soriano needs to take a good look at the recovery runs City’s midfield players are struggling to make before committing any more of the club’s resources to an increased fixture load. At time of writing, they are not certain of any more Champions League revenue this season. They’ve got enough on their hands with incoming asterisks.

The wider world of football never has much sympathy or love for its most prolific winners. It’s tribal and combative by nature. But the bigger picture needs its most creative and impactful artists like De Bruyne and Haaland to be fit and fresh enough to grace the biggest canvasses with their most eye-catching work. We bestow track-and-field greatness solely on Olympic performance. The World Cup gives football a similarly skewed focus in its outlying territories like the USA.

Another 63 games there this summer are unlikely to feature much worth adding to their collections of memories until Mamelodi Sundowns and Auckland City have gone home. Inter Miami will need help in order to win audiences from the Stanley Cup and NBA finals.

Trump will only support winners. He’s not interested in making FIFA great again. Unless he’s got plans to annexe Argentina and Brazil in the next 12 months, the US men’s national team are not offering much hope of a serious tilt at FIFA’s most prestigious prize next year, so a World Cup that woos Americans with its colour, skill, athleticism and drama is needed to capture US hearts and minds on a lasting basis.

The Club World Cup is going to happen this coming summer. I only hope it’s the first and last of its kind. The dynamically-priced tickets are on sale and Infantino is on the campaign trail with his Tiffany-designed trophy and equally gaudy and plated utterances about ‘uniting the world FOR FREE’ (in the capitalised words on the FIFA website).

Infantino is an invention of his own self-importance and so is his tournament. An emperor with a shopping addiction for new clothes to expose himself in. I think he might be better advised to whisper about his latest raiment for now, accept that this year’s tournament is unlikely to be anymore than a fancy dress rehearsal and concentrate on putting on a catwalk show in 2026. The football world only has room in its calendar for one World Cup.

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