Chelsea and Manchester City to play in new 32-team Club World Cup in 2025
The USA will host the first edition of 32-team Club World Cup –featuring Chelsea and Manchester City – in 2025, FIFA have announced.
Plans to expand and revamp the competition have been in the pipeline for years and on Friday world football’s governing body confirmed where the new look tournament will take place.
The switch from the current seven club format was announced last December with FIFA President Gianni Infantino declaring it would be ‘like a World Cup’.
‘The FIFA Club World Cup 2025 will be the pinnacle of elite professional men’s club football, and with the required infrastructure in place together with a massive local interest, the United States is the ideal host to kick off this new, global tournament,’ he said on Friday.
‘With some of the world’s top clubs already qualified, fans from every continent will be bringing their passion and energy to the United States in two years’ time for this significant milestone in our mission to make football truly global.’
With the USA, Mexico and Canada jointly hosting the 2026 World Cup, it is hoped that the Club World Cup will increase the interest in the sport in North America and begin the build up to the most-watched sporting event in the world.
Like other major International tournaments, the new Club World Cup will take place every four years and while full dates and venues are yet to be announced it is likely to take place in the summer.
This will mean that the September international break will be merged with the October one in order to accomadate the additional fixtures.
In its current guise, the Club World Cup sees the winner of each continent’s competition – in Europe’s case the Champions League – plus the hosts’ national champion compete in a small knock out tournament.
But now it will look exactly like the World Cup has done in recent years: eight groups of four with the top two qualifying for the round-of-16.
UEFA have 12 slots for the competition, four of which will be given to the most recent winners of the Champions League, namely Chelsea, Real Madrid, Manchester City and the 2024 winner.
The other eight will be decided by the European coefficient rankings but there is a limit of two clubs per country.
In the meantime, City will take part in the 2023 Club World Cup following their recent UCL triumph, which is due to take place in Saudi Arabia in December.
