These are the players Club World Cup should pursue during its special transfer window

The FIFA 2025 club World Cup ended, but according to an ESPN report, several teams do not want to wait four years to come back. According to the report, several clubs in Europe and South America – with Real Madrid being the only team named – spoke with FIFA of the Club World Cup every two years in order to bring more income to their clubs.

FIFA had $ 1 billion to distribute between the participating teams and did so in a way that allowed certain teams, such as Real Madrid, to earn more money than others. Real Madrid has won $ 82.5 million taking place in the semi-finals, while the Chelsea FC champions won the trophy (replica) and $ 114.6 million. With money like that, it is not surprising that the teams want it to happen more frequently than every four years. Other teams in Europe and South America also approached FIFA representatives expressing their interest not to wait until 2029 to hold this tournament again.

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The problem of FIFA? They don’t think they can generate $ 1 billion (or more) to distribute to teams if they do it on a biennial basis. Currently, the next Club World Cup is scheduled for 2029, Brazil and Qatar showing out of interest to being the host of this tournament. However, despite several clubs would have liked more opportunities to play in this tournament, FIFA considers a biennial version of the tournament of this size as “unrealizable” in terms of generation of income which would be necessary to satisfy these teams.

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The South American teams – namely the 4 Brazilian participants in Fluminense, Flamego, Botafogo and Palmeiras – did so well in the tournament, they were able to generate much higher income than the total salary of the team, which really helps these teams to remain competitive. They were the big winners of the tournament, and that would not have been subject to what you did to try to generate even more income that is vital for their club operations.

Despite the conviction of FIFA that the fact of having the Club World Cup every two years in this extended format is “impracticable”, the president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, praised the success of the tournament, in particular their ability to fulfill the major NFL stadiums for the last games of the tournament. “All the teams that came here have been happy – some teams that did not come here because they did not qualify called us to see how they could qualify,” said Gianni Infantino before the club World Cup final. “Of course, I would have liked to have Liverpool here, Arsenal, Manchester United, Barcelona, Tottenham, AC Milan, Napoli … But you have to qualify and there are different criteria.”

For the moment, the Club World Cup will work to do a better job to relieve the concerns of several teams whose players felt overwhelmed after long seasons. If FIFA selects Qatar to accommodate the 2029 edition of the tournament, which feels in the cards, they will have to play again with the football calendar because the matches could not be played during the summer in an even warmer climate than the United States.

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Many of the complaints of the participating European teams during the World Cup 2025 focused on the weather, which made teams play in oppressive daytime heat and strong thunderstorms that affected several games. He even prompted Infantino to declare that the interior sites for the World Cup next summer will be used even more for day matches in order to avoid heat, humidity and bad weather that tormented many games in the group Cup group phase.

The movement of the club World Cup with 32 teams in the fall or winter months will affect the seasons of the club around the world and would mean that the leagues should modify the schedules to allow their teams to play. The leagues always recover changes in the calendar which had to occur for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, and many European leagues were particularly frank on their extreme hesitation to modify their schedule again to welcome the club World Cup knowing that they should start again a few years later for the 2034 World Cup in Saudi Arabia.

However, money from discussions and teams like Real Madrid want to report more fluent in income. There are many factors that should be chopped and logistics that should be changed again. But, FIFA is probably happy that some of the largest clubs in the world want this tournament to happen again more quickly than they are probably ready to adapt.