Club World Cup - Summer 2025

[mad4city]

In the BBC Live Feed they have a section describing the CWC as a tournament marred with problems:

• Unfavourable weather conditions
• Uneven interest in the tournament
• Huge gulf in quality of teams
• Fixture congestion and player burnout
• Politicisation of the sport
• Rich clubs getting even richer

They seem to have conceded then that there are some well attended games.

Some of the points are valid but the politicisation that the BBC are referring to is a minority stake that a Saudi investment fund has in DAZN the broadcaster. We are supposed to be horrified by this. I am not. The UK is global decline but it can hardly condemn the Saudi state after Britain's role in the middle-east. The BBC's editorial role reflects their imperial political view of the world.

While there's no denying there's probably more than a grain of truth in that list, it's only right to acknowledge that every single one of those criticisms has also been levelled at the Premier League.
Perhaps the CWC is only the logical conclusion of the path first forged by the not-so-great and the greedy of Football, over 25 years ago?
Equally, the BBC and the British media in general have formed for calling it wrong when it comes to the globalisation of sport. The European Cup, the World Cup, the Heineken Cup, the Rugby World Cup... all were derided and debunked, without consequence to the growth of said tournaments.
Finally, I blame Kier Starmer. If he had only done a Tony Blair to UEFA and written a "please sir, can Liverpool play too" letter, the BBC would have conveniently forgotten everything on that list and be right behind this.

 

[DMA's]

What a life these guys have. I think the club World Cup has been great for city. Get the good vibes back and help get the new faces integrated into the group.

Must be nice to be somewhere where they aren’t hounded 24/7 as most people in America don’t know who they are!

 

[Gundogan's Moustache]

What a life these guys have. I think the club World Cup has been great for city. Get the good vibes back and help get the new faces integrated into the group.

Must be nice to be somewhere where they aren’t hounded 24/7 as most people in America don’t know who they are!

There’s a later video with Pep joining in too,

From what I’ve seen, I’d say it’s being used as a longer more competitive on the pitch, more relaxed off it pre season

 

[Mad Eyed Screamer]

What a life these guys have. I think the club World Cup has been great for city. Get the good vibes back and help get the new faces integrated into the group.

Must be nice to be somewhere where they aren’t hounded 24/7 as most people in America don’t know who they are!

You can see the detractors adding “getting skin cancer” to the negatives of this tournament

 

[dadnlad]

just put Dazn on and horse teeths on talking yonited turns off

 

[PeterBarnesShorts]

If it was just rags and dippers from England they would be creaming themselves

We know this is true of the fanboys that parade as ‘sportswriters’ but it wouldn’t be every football fan.Surely,the tribalism of club football means there would only ever be two sets of English club fans who would be invested in this competition.The rest will deride it,but then be sure to show interest once the ‘other’ English clubs lose or are knocked out!?It’s just the nature of the beast but I’ve not seen it written as such anywhere…

 

[Marvin.]

Bayern beaten so if we beat Juve we will avoid PSG and Bayern and probably Real Madrid. They are arguably the 3 strongest sides in the competition. We need to beat Juve and hope that Real Madrid avoid defeat vs Salzburg. That then would open up the competition for us.

If we lose/draw against Juve then the converse is true

 

[deano ou812]

Bayern beaten so if we beat Juve we will avoid PSG and Bayern and probably Real Madrid. They are arguably the 3 strongest sides in the competition. We need to beat Juve and hope that Real Madrid avoid defeat vs Salzburg. That then would open up the competition for us.

If we lose/draw against Juve then the converse is true

Sod’s Law we get Madrid..

 

[Gorbachev]

Bayern beaten so if we beat Juve we will avoid PSG and Bayern and probably Real Madrid. They are arguably the 3 strongest sides in the competition. We need to beat Juve and hope that Real Madrid avoid defeat vs Salzburg. That then would open up the competition for us.

If we lose/draw against Juve then the converse is true

If Madrid beat Salzburg, which is likely, whoever wins out of us and Juventus is getting to the final in my opinion.

 

[uwe rosler 28]

Bayern beaten so if we beat Juve we will avoid PSG and Bayern and probably Real Madrid. They are arguably the 3 strongest sides in the competition. We need to beat Juve and hope that Real Madrid avoid defeat vs Salzburg. That then would open up the competition for us.

If we lose/draw against Juve then the converse is true

Yes win and our route to final looks good possibly inter in quarters as long as Madrid avoid defeat.

 

[Impeccable One]

Blues in Roswell GA over the weekend

Now on to Orlando !

 

[swintonjamie]

I really wish I’d have done research on air con sitch before I decided to choose the Philly and Orlando games and skip Atlanta. I’m a shell of a man already so Thursday might kill me off!

 

[balotelli's back pocket]

Beat Juve and we'd be favourites to reach the final IMO.

 

[Tbilisi]

Blues in Roswell GA over the weekend

Now on to Orlando !

Who's that cool customer on the far right as we look at it? ;)

 

[mexico1970]

Wow, who's that cool looking customer on the far right as we look at it? ;)

Every one of them are cool, by courtesy of the fact they are blues :)

 

[Cobwebcat]

It’s a shame we didn’t get one more goal then a draw would have done it but it’s still in our hands.

The draw is VERY lopsided. Beat Juve and we should get to the final. If we don’t beat Juve then we can only blame ourselves and could go out at any stage.

 

[Tbilisi]

Every one of them are cool, by courtesy of the fact they are blues :)

I doff my cap to every Blue that has stayed out for the duration, absolute legends.....but maybe the heat has affected some of their dress sense. :)

 

[swintonjamie]

Plenty of Flamengo in Orlando before their match, seen a few blues but I’m sure I’ll start seeing more from tomorrow

 

[Jamshopbridge]

Plenty of Flamengo in Orlando before their match, seen a few blues but I’m sure I’ll start seeing more from tomorrow

I'm in the stadium concourse with them now. They're a rowdy lot. I've never seen so many fit female football fans at a game. I'm in fucking dreamland!

 

[cibaman]

Sod’s Law we get Madrid..

Would that really be bad thing? If we aren’t going to win the competition, wouldn’t it be better to go out sooner rather than later? The players could have a decent rest and then we could regroup and prepare for the PL season.

Obviously we’d lose out financially and miss the kudos of winning the trophy. But we’d probably be better prepared for next season.

And if we were to beat RM it would set us up nicely for the rest of the tournament.

Better than muddling through 2 or 3 matches against average opposition and then losing to the first strong team we face?