{"id":6407,"date":"2025-07-13T10:02:03","date_gmt":"2025-07-13T10:02:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/6407\/"},"modified":"2025-07-13T10:02:03","modified_gmt":"2025-07-13T10:02:03","slug":"psg-and-chelsea-in-the-club-world-cup-final-reflects-the-state-of-the-game-in-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/6407\/","title":{"rendered":"PSG and Chelsea in the Club World Cup final reflects the state of the game in 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was a temporary exhibit in the lobby of Trump Tower this week, near the 60-foot waterfall, the gold-plated escalator and the gold-plated elevators, and it looked right at home.<\/p>\n

FIFA\u2019s new Club World Cup trophy was crafted in collaboration with luxury jeweller Tiffany & Co, which is based on the same block on New York City\u2019s Fifth Avenue. It is plated in 24-carat gold \u2014 \u201cprestigious, timeless,\u201d says FIFA president Gianni Infantino<\/a>, whose name appears on it. Twice.<\/p>\n

It is certainly eye-catching. Like some expensive toy, it comes with a key that, if turned three times, allows the trophy to be opened up and transformed \u2014 in this case from a shield into what FIFA calls a \u201cmultifaceted and orbital structure\u201d. \u201cWow,\u201d President Trump said when Infantino gave a demonstration in front of television cameras in the Oval Office in April. \u201cYou\u2019ve gotta be kidding.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump is expected to join Infantino as part of the presentation party that will hand the trophy to the winning captain \u2014 either Paris Saint-Germain\u2019s Marquinhos or Chelsea\u2019s Reece James \u2014 after Sunday\u2019s Club World Cup final at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey (or \u201cNew York New Jersey\u201d as FIFA appears intent on rebranding it).<\/p>\n

Quite what the captain does with the trophy at that point \u2014\u00a0whether he lifts it, or opens it, or opens it and then tries to lift it in its expanded form \u2014\u00a0remains to be seen. But Infantino will have the moment he craves: fireworks, blaring music and Trump in attendance as the new world champions celebrate with the trophy and the winning club\u2019s owners celebrate a windfall in the region of $114million (\u00a384.5million)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Club World Cup trophy on display at Trump Tower this week (Juan Mabromata\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

This summer\u2019s Club World Cup has been a strange experience. There has been a lot to take issue with, from the way it was crowbarred into a small gap in a horribly congested calendar to the commercially driven insistence on playing matches in scorching heat at the height of an American summer<\/a>. The prize fund is only going to compound the issue of financial inequality in the game and then there\u2019s the endless bombast from Infantino about how \u201cthe 32 best teams in the world\u201d and their fans have created drama and atmosphere on an \u201cepic\u201d, \u201cphenomenal\u201d, \u201cincredible\u201d scale, beyond anything previously seen in club football.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want the headline from the beginning \u2014 as we are in Trump Tower \u2014 the golden era of global club football has started,\u201d Infantino declared on Saturday morning<\/a>. \u201cWe can say definitely that this FIFA Club World Cup has been a huge, huge, huge success. After the final tomorrow, we will have (had) two or three billion viewers all over the world, watching the top, top, top-quality football featuring the best players in the best teams in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tournament has had its moments, but is this the showpiece final Infantino would have wished for the first version of the expanded tournament? Probably not; even if he were to look beyond his lifelong affinity with Inter, he might have preferred to see a final involving Real Madrid and\/or one of the South American teams. The first would have been for commercial reasons, the second because it would have brought a global dimension, as well as a colour and vibrancy, that an all-European final lacks.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In many ways, though, a final between PSG and Chelsea seems to encapsulate the state of the game in 2025: a club owned by a Qatari sovereign wealth fund facing a club owned primarily by an American private equity firm<\/a>. They are two of the three clubs with the biggest net transfer spend in world football over the past decade. (The fact that the other club in that trio is Manchester United, owned by an American family with a real estate empire, at least serves as a reminder that spending fortunes does not always guarantee success<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Money makes the world go around \u2014 and no more so than in football. The sport did not anticipate the influx of American and Middle Eastern wealth it has seen over the past couple of decades, but it now actively lusts after that investment, whether direct or otherwise. FIFA, football\u2019s world governing body, is at the centre of that equation.<\/p>\n

This is a tournament on American soil, bankrolled by American and Middle Eastern investment. When, shortly after succeeding Sepp Blatter as FIFA president in 2016, Infantino floated the idea of an expanded Club World Cup with a $1billion prize fund for participating clubs, questions were asked about where that money was going to come from. The answer, to a large extent, is from the United States and the Middle East: big commercial deals with U.S. firms such as Coca Cola, Visa and Bank of America as well as with Qatar Airways and PIF (a Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund) and an enormous television rights deal with DAZN, a U.S-based broadcaster that is now part-owned by SURJ Sports Investment, a subsidiary of PIF<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Infantino has been unapologetic for chasing Middle Eastern investment. In May, he arrived late at the FIFA Congress in Asuncion, Paraguay<\/a> \u2014\u00a0to the disdain of delegates from UEFA, European football\u2019s governing body \u2014\u00a0after spending the previous days at various summits and ceremonial events with Trump in Qatar and Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

At the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum in Riyadh, the FIFA president spoke about the \u201chuge unexploited potential\u201d \u2014 even now \u2014 for investment from both countries, telling his audience: \u201cInvest in the beautiful game! It will be the best investment you can make!\u201d<\/p>\n

Infantino claims interest in the Club World Cup has been off the scale. But it seems irrelevant to question whether a Qatari airline or a Saudi sovereign wealth fund has extracted value from sponsorship deals if those deals are less about \u201cvalue\u201d in the traditional sense than about cementing that nation\u2019s government\u2019s relationship with FIFA and enjoying whatever benefits might come of that.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Infantino eulogised about the success of the Club World Cup on Saturday (Sven Hoppe\/picture alliance via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Next summer, the U.S. will co-host the men\u2019s World Cup with Canada and Mexico. Three-quarters of the games (78 out of 104) will take place in American cities and the whole affair seems to be shaping into a Trump-Infantino production. Trump has delighted his \u201cgood friend\u201d and FIFA counterpart by becoming the chair of the 2026 World Cup task force \u2014 and this at a time when Trump signed executive orders restricting entry to the U.S. for nationals of various countries while imposing heavy trade tariffs on others, including their tournament co-hosts, Mexico.<\/p>\n

Trump told reporters in March that political or economic tensions between the U.S. and its neighbours and co-hosts might make the World Cup \u201cmuch more exciting\u201d. Infantino, alongside him, nodded in agreement.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Infantino in the Oval Office, with a group from Juventus, during the tournament (Brendan Smialowski\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

As for Saudi Arabia, it will host the 2034 men\u2019s World Cup \u2014 despite the concerns raised by various groups about the kingdom\u2019s human rights record \u2014 and its influence on FIFA and the football industry continues to grow. Infantino\u2019s predecessor, Sepp Blatter, told German TV channel ntv this week<\/a>: \u201cWe have lost football to Saudi Arabia. We offered it and they took it. Surprisingly, there is no opposition to this within FIFA.\u201d<\/p>\n

Football revolves around the prestige and profile of the biggest clubs in Europe, which import talent from all over the world but primarily from South America and Africa. But the football economy, increasingly, revolves around the U.S. and the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Where any of this is leading is anyone\u2019s guess. But in a decade that has already seen 12 of Europe\u2019s biggest clubs try and fail to establish a breakaway \u2018super league\u2019,<\/a> it is easy to imagine a scenario in which the game\u2019s established structure comes under serious threat once more.<\/p>\n

The scene in the VIP section at Wednesday\u2019s semi-final at MetLife (below) \u2014 Infantino, Real Madrid president Florentino Perez, PSG chairman Nasser Al-Khelaifi and Turki Al-Sheikh<\/a>, the chairman of Saudi Arabia\u2019s General Entertainment Authority \u2014 left you wondering just how four of the most influential figures in football in 2025 might proceed if, hypothetically, they felt they had the opportunity to change the game\u2019s landscape to their design.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(Alex Grimm\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

It is hard not to imagine that Infantino\u2019s vision for the future goes much further than a 32-team tournament every four years when he has been talking about this tournament as a \u201cbig bang\u201d and a \u201cnew era of club football\u201d.\u00a0At Saturday\u2019s chaotic media event at Trump Tower,<\/a> The Athletic asked the FIFA president if he might push for it to be played every two years. \u201cIn the future, we will see what it brings us. We will make it better,\u201d he said, a vague answer that will cause consternation among traditionalists.<\/p>\n

Infantino sounds like someone who is looking far beyond the game\u2019s traditional structures and architecture, in which everything is built around national leagues. The football business has changed hugely \u2014 and some of us would say not for the better \u2014 over the first quarter of the 21st century. It threatens to change far more dramatically over the next 25 years.<\/p>\n

He claimed the Club World Cup has broken all records when it comes to the revenue generated per match, saying that \u201cno other club competition in the world today comes anywhere close\u201d. Those enormous commercial deals have certainly helped at a time when the organisers have found themselves putting the \u201cdynamic\u201d into \u201cdynamic pricing\u201d<\/a> by slashing ticket prices in a bid to minimise the number of empty seats in the knock-out rounds.<\/p>\n

Whether the tournament has captured the imagination of the typical football fan \u2014 or, to generalise less, of the typical cross-section of football fans \u2014 is a different matter entirely. A Champions League or Copa Libertadores semi-final and final is an enormous event that stops people in their tracks and dominates conversations; a World Cup final even more so. Was the football world captivated when PSG tore Real Madrid apart on Wednesday? It didn\u2019t feel like it. Will it be any different when PSG take on Chelsea on Sunday? It is hard to imagine so.<\/p>\n

The Club World Cup has its showpiece event, one that promises to be illuminated by a PSG team that has taken its game to another level since the turn of the year, excelling under the stewardship of Luis Enrique. But whether Sunday\u2019s final will represent a showpiece for the game, or merely for FIFA\u2019s success in milking it, is another question.<\/p>\n

In the post-match festivities, that key will be turned three times to unlock the trophy. Infantino might say it is symbolic of club football\u2019s true potential being unlocked as part of this new \u201cgolden era\u201d he has been talking about. But\u2026 oh, what\u2019s that old saying? All that glitters is not gold.<\/p>\n

\u00a0(Top photo: Cole Palmer and Ousmane Dembele at Rockefeller Center. Darren Walsh\/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There was a temporary exhibit in the lobby of Trump Tower this week, near the 60-foot waterfall, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[464,2098,399,6090,398,396,397,1088,1084,403,99,1794],"class_list":["post-6407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-chelsea","tag-fifa-club-world-cup","tag-football","tag-international-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-paris-saint-germain","tag-premier-league","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-sports-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}