Man City could be snubbed by lucrative new FIFA Club World Cup tournament
Manchester United and Liverpool have already been touted as invitees to the proposed 2021 tournament but Man City would be left to fight for one of three places
Fifa are planning to launch a World Cup for clubs … and
Manchester City would not be guaranteed a place, unlike
Manchester United and Liverpool.
The world governing body is intent on vamping up the current Club World Cup, which pits the European champions against the top dogs from other continents in a low-key December affair involving seven clubs.
And with a figure of £100million for each club being bandied around, the world's biggest clubs have all sat up and taken notice.
Fifa has even sketched out an idea to launch the competition in the summer of 2012 in China, with 24 teams, using a similar format to the international World Cup.
But the method they have proposed for choosing the 12 European clubs who would be invited to the tournament has stoked up the same kind of stink which Uefa seems to provoke.
The proposal for the initial tournament is to invite the nine clubs who have won at least three European Cups in their history – Real Madrid, AC Milan, Bayern Munich, Barcelona, Liverpool, Ajax, and Inter Milan.
They also throw in Juventus, who have won two tournaments, but have also won two intercontinental titles, perhaps a convenient way of squeezing in a big Italian club but ignoring the other two-time winners – Nottingham Forest, Benfica and Porto.
Basing invitation on past triumphs would leave the rest of Europe scrabbling to fill three vacant spaces, with Fifa as yet unclear as to how that will happen.
It is hard to escape the notion that the “old boys' club” which holds undue sway in international football, is at work again.
The relevance of having won European Cups in the past is highly questionable – Ajax have a success-filled history, but do they deserve a place among the world's elite based on what they did 45 years ago?
And if Fifa want this to be truly an elite competition for the world's best, would Liverpool, United and the Italian clubs really be ahead of City and Paris St Germain?
In the same way that Uefa's originally well-meaning financial fair play rules were warped into being used as a weapon to beat down the nouveaux riche, it seems that Fifa are pandering to the traditional elite.
The Fifa competition has already garnered support, with Real Madrid and Barcelona both speaking positively about the idea, while United chief executive Ed Woodward has spoken of the money-spinning aspect of the event without committing his support.
But it has also run into stiff competition, from Uefa – jealously guarding the Champions League – from the European Clubs Association and from the international players' union, concerned at their members suffering from burn-out.
There is every chance, if the competition does ever get off the ground, that City will be involved, especially as the United Arab Emirates figure strongly among the expected financial backers.
But that is not the point – participation in any football event should be on merit, not by privileged invitation.
