da heads bet：
da fazobetai： Why is the Club World Cup final such a non-event on the football calendar? Inter Milan have recently gained the title champions of the world following a 3-0 victory over the Champions of Africa, TP Mazembe of DR Congo. Yet this may still be insufficient to keep Rafa Benitez in a job at Inter. So evidently the football merit of the trophy is not as high as the accolade suggests. For such an esteemed name, the FIFA Club World Cup carries little prestige and worth in Europe, but particularly within Britain. Its international counterpart the World Cup is the summit of any players’ international career. Yet this tournament doesn’t even merit its being televised in this country, this time round, and receives little to no media attention from the British press.
Certainly outside of Britain it is taken seriously. For the South American clubs it is seen as the highest accolade to be achieved in the club game. With the winner of the Copa Libertadores dreaming of adding the title champions of the world to their name to accompany their South American crown. For first time finalists TP Mazembe it was an honour to be representing all of Africa in the tournament. And indeed there was genuine African wide support for the DR Congo team. There is not the equivalent sense of pan-Europeanism to generate genuine continental wide support for Inter. Indeed there is little to lift people from their malaise towards the tournament in Britain.
So is this just English snobbery to the game around the globe again? Thinking its own tournaments and competitions are superior to that of the rest of the world? In the midst of a false sense of supremacy, before being shown to be infact behind the rest of the world like the US and Hungary did on the international front in 1950 and 1953 respectively.
I don’t think so. There are a few differentiations between the international game then and this competition today. First of all there is a distinct difference in class between Europe and the rest of the world, mainly as a result of money but also as a tradition of the clubs. The cream of the rest of the World’s football talent all ply their trade in Europe. This was epitomised by the best African on the pitch on Saturday was wearing an Inter jersey, Samuel Eto’o, and was also the only African to score.
It leads to games where the European teams’ opponents, usually from South America, go on to the pitch acknowledging their inferiority and therefore try merely to stifle the opposition and sneak a goal on the counter. And although sometimes successful for the South Americans, e.g. Internacional in 2006 and Sao Paulo in 2005, it makes for incredibly dull games which are hardly going to win people over to the competition. The exception was the 2007 final when Boca Juniors tried to take A.C Milan on and were put to the sword; a 4-2 defeat in an enthralling game did not do the Italians dominance justice. Similarly to Eto’o this year, the best South American on the pitch, Kaka, was playing for the Italian s again demonstrating how much the rest of the world feeds the European clubs.
Secondly it lacks any sense of football traditional or culture as a competition, so it has not been able to gain any prestige or credibility. Its International counterpart, the World Cup, was born out of such great roots. Uruguay celebrated 100 years of independence by inviting the world to a game of football in 1930. Yet this tournament was a FIFA driven expansion of a game between the Champions of Europe and the Champions of South America in a bid to reassert its football dominance over UEFA, take football to new pastures, predominately Japan, and make money from it. The original inception in 2000 was a disaster and by Manchester United opting to play in it rather than the F.A. Cup, it lost many fans in this country.
This showed there is no room in the European football calendar for a full scale tournament to decide global champions. So should we just abandon the idea of a Club World Cup as this format is a bit of a joke? Again I don’t think so. Outside of Europe it is taken very seriously and as stated before the huge importation of players by European clubs from abroad, means it could grow in stature as this players with their own football ideas rate this tournament. For instance in 2000 Roberto Carlos was desperate for his Madrid colleagues to be as excited as he was by the prospect of becoming World Champions.
But perhaps the format does need tweaking to make it more suited to those who appreciate it, for instance expanding the earlier parts of it so the non-European teams gain more experience playing each other and learn different styles of football. Then there could be a one of game with the continent that was runner up last year, usually the South American team, with the winner of that playing the champions of the continent that won it the previous year, usually the European team. This would help to ensure the European team took it seriously as they would not want to full down the pecking order and have to play more games in it in the future, whilst ensuring it did not take too much time away from their other football commitments. Also it would offer the carrot to the rest of the world that they could climb the tournaments pecking order and by doing well enter at a later stage the following year.
If you like this blog you can follow we on twitter @Joey2hats