Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe first 32-team edition of the tournament faced criticism in the build-up for stretching demands on elite players and has been played out in baking temperatures in the United States that have raised concerns for the health of those involved.<\/p>\n
There were also doubts about the level of interest the competition would generate among fans, but Infantino said he was satisfied with the attendance at matches, despite many games being far from sold out, and claimed it had been a major success financially.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe golden age of club football has started. We can definitely say this FIFA Club World Cup has been a huge success,\u201d Infantino told reporters at Trump Tower on New York City\u2019s Fifth Avenue, where FIFA has just opened an office.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe heard that financially it would not work, that nobody is interested, but I can say we generated almost $2.1bn in revenues, for 63 matches,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat makes an average of $33m per match \u2013 no other club competition in the world comes close.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is already the most successful club competition in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former Liverpool coach Jurgen Klopp has been one of the leading voices against the tournament, calling it \u201cthe worst idea ever implemented in football\u201d in a recent interview.<\/p>\n
But the head of world football\u2019s governing body dismissed suggestions that Klopp might be speaking for most observers in Europe.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe shouldn\u2019t say that the opinion of Europe on this is very bad because it is not true,\u201d said Infantino, who was appearing on a stage alongside numerous footballing greats, including the Brazilian Ronaldo.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the teams who have come here have been happy \u2013 some teams who didn\u2019t come here because they didn\u2019t qualify were calling us to see how they could qualify.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, I would have liked to have Liverpool here, Arsenal, Manchester United, Barcelona, Tottenham, AC Milan, Napoli \u2026 but you have to qualify and there are different criteria.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next Club World Cup is due to take place in 2029, with Infantino refusing to commit when asked whether the tournament could be played every two years or be expanded to feature more teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe created something new, something which is here to stay, something which is changing the landscape of club football,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the eve of the FIFA Club World Cup final, the governing body\u2019s president hails a \u2018golden era\u2019…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[7,88,817,686,28022],"class_list":{"0":"post-202228","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-sport","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-us-canada"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114842134693371466","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}