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World football governing body, FIFA has announced China as the host of the inaugural edition of the new expanded Club World Cup in 2021. The competition, which currently features seven teams; the winner from each confederation’s major continental tournament will be expanded to 24 teams for the first time.
FIFA also that the next edition of the current Club World Cup format would be hosted by Qatar ahead of the World Cup in 2022 with the 2019 competition kicking off on December 2019.
The new format would feature eight European teams, six from South America, three from each of Africa, Asia and North and Central America and one from Oceania will begin in June 2021 and the competition will run every four years from June to July, taking the place on the FIFA calendar currently occupied by the Confederations Cup, which is also being scrapped.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino confirmed that China had been the only candidate to host the competition as football has been made a national priority under President Xi Jinping.
“It is a historic decision for football,” FIFA President Gianni Infantino said, speaking at a FIFA council meeting in Shanghai. “The new [tournament] will be a competition which anyone who loves football is looking forward to. It is the first real and true Club World Cup where the best clubs will compete.
“It will allow us to generate significant revenues but I want to underline this, very, very clearly … FIFA will have zero out of this because we will reinvest this in football.”
However, several top European clubs have kicked against the extended format of the competition when it was announced at a FIFA Council meeting in Miami in March. Clubs including Juventus, Manchester United, Barcelona and Ajax, the European Club Association (ECA) insisted no ECA clubs would take part to such a competition.
