FIFA plans to grant China the rights to host the inaugural version of its expanded Club World Cup, a 24-team tournament scheduled for 2021 that will feature some of the world’s biggest club teams and provide a significant cash infusion for world soccer’s governing body. European soccer officials, who had strongly opposed an expanded tournament for clubs when the plans were raised, now appear set to go along, and to provide a third of the teams in the expanded tournament. The new quadrennial event, announced in March, will replace the unpopular Confederations Cup, an eight-team national tournament that in recent versions had acted as a tuneup for World Cup hosts. It also will mean the demise of the Club World Cup as an annual event; under its current format, seven teams will play in Qatar, the 2022 World Cup host, both this year and next year. Hosting the new club championship also could be a boost for a Chinese bid to host the 2030 World Cup, but it also will force FIFA to navigate the same tricky political ground that recently caused serious damage to the N.B.A.’s commercial relationship with China.

Source: New York Times October 20, 2019 16:07 UTC