FIFA Club World Cup

FIFA Club World Cup – Wikipedia curated content under CC-BY-SA license copyright laws.

The FIFA Club World Cup is an international men’s association football competition organised by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport’s global governing body. The competition was first contested in 2000 as the FIFA Club World Championship. It was not held from 2001 to 2004 due to a combination of factors, most importantly the collapse of FIFA’s marketing partner International Sport and Leisure (ISL), but since 2005 it has been held every year, and has been hosted by Brazil, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Qatar. Views differ as to the cup’s prestige: it struggles to attract interest in most of Europe, and is the object of heated debate in South America.

The first FIFA Club World Championship took place in Brazil in 2000. It ran in parallel with the Intercontinental Cup, a competition played by the winners of the UEFA Champions League and the Copa Libertadores, from 2000 to 2004, with the champions of each tournament both recognised (in 2017) by FIFA as club world champions. In 2005, the Intercontinental Cup was merged with the FIFA Club World Championship, and in 2006, the tournament was renamed as the FIFA Club World Cup. The winner of the Club World Cup receives the FIFA Club World Cup trophy and a FIFA World Champions certificate.

The current format of the tournament involves seven teams competing for the title at venues within the host nation over a period of about two weeks; the winners of that year’s AFC Champions League (Asia), CAF Champions League (Africa), CONCACAF Champions League (North America), Copa Libertadores (South America), OFC Champions League (Oceania) and UEFA Champions League (Europe), along with the host nation’s national champions, participate in a straight knock-out tournament. The host nation’s national champions contest a play-off against the Oceania champions, from which the winner joins the champions of Asia, Africa and North America in the quarter-finals. The quarter-final winners go on to face the European and South American champions, who enter at the semi-final stage, for a place in the final.

Real Madrid hold the record for most victories, winning the competition four times. Corinthians’ inaugural victory remains the best result from a host nation’s national league champions. Teams from Spain have won the tournament seven times, the most for any nation. The current world champions are Germany’s Bayern Munich, who defeated Mexico’s Tigres UANL 1–0 in the 2020 FIFA Club World Cup Final.