In the end, the Club World Cup was worth fighting over. It was unclear who said what to who at full time of the final on Sunday, but as the Chelsea players celebrated, tempers flared.
PSG’s Gianluigi Donnarumma and Luis Enrique and Chelsea’s Joao Pedro were at the center of it all. There were a couple of slaps, a shove, some words exchanged, and - on the surface - much anti-climactic drama. Pedro ended up on the ground. No one looked particularly happy. It was already 3-0 Chelsea, a long and sweaty Club World Cup in the U.S. finally complete.
But that scrap was perhaps needed, the bit of bite to bring what had otherwise been a reasonably tepid tournament to life.
The 2025 CWC was deadened for long spells. There were some good moments, to be sure, many provided by the fans of teams that had long since been eliminated. But much of this heavily marketed, expanded 32-team tournament felt forced, unproductive, and played out in a series of stadiums across the U.S. that weren’t prepared for, well, a soccer tournament.
Still, competitions need time to gestate, grow, find their own meaning. And even if this beta-testing version of FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s political vanity project - and the potential money behind it - didn’t quite come off, there was plenty of promise to be found, and evidence enough to suggest that it could be successful for many years to come.
