FIFA President Gianni Infantino is set to shelve his plans for an expanded Club World Cup after accepting he underestimated the strength of opposition.
Infantino wanted to launch a 24-team tournament, including 12 sides from Europe, in a four-yearly event set to start in 2021.
The new competition would have been part of a planned £19billion growth in Fifa competitions, including a World Nations League based on the new model being launched by Uefa next season.
Infantino attempted to seduce Europe’s biggest clubs by offering a £2bn potential prize fund – underwritten by a consortium of Middle East backers and Japan’s Softbank – in a series of discussions at Fifa’s Zurich headquarters.
Barcelona and Real Madrid, who are envious of the wealth of the Premier League elite, were early biters, while Manchester United executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward appeared to give his tacit approval in an investor call to major shareholders last week.
Fifa even tried to lure the likes of Liverpool, AC Milan, Inter and Bayern Munich by offering automatic entry to the first competition to all clubs that had won the European Cup or Champions League three times, outlining a prize structure that would have earned the winners £100million.
But Uefa dragooned even the interested clubs into signing up to a statement last week which slammed Infantino’s proposal, branding the Fifa boss guilty of “hasty timing and a lack of concrete information”.
That turned the issue into an effective vote of confidence in Swiss Infantino, who saw the proposals as the key to his re-election for another four-year term in the next Fifa Presidential vote due next year.
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And Infantino opted out of a battle he feared he would lose, asking his deputy general secretary, former Croatian star Zvonimir Boban, to contact Uefa and top clubs to say the plans had been taken off the table.
Infantino is also fighting other battles within Fifa, where his relationship with Uefa President Aleksander Ceferin and African football bosses has reached rock-bottom.
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Uefa believe their former general secretary has “gone native” since he switched from their headquarters in Nyon to Zurich.
Africa, meanwhile, has accused Infantino of attempting to fix next month’s vote for the host of the 2026 World Cup in favour of the three-nation bid headed by the USA against the candidacy of outsiders Morocco.
Infantino is already seeking to get the green light for the 2022 World Cup, due to be played in Qatar, to be extended from 32 teams to 48.
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That would mean the tournament lasting at least four days longer than the scheduled 28 days – which will cause outrage from the European club who supply the bulk of players and whose season would be directly impacted.
Infantino recognises Qatar does not have sufficient stadia or infrastructure to host an 16 teams and 16 matches, up from 64 to 80.
But he is now attempting to persuade the Qataris to share at least some of the hosting of the tournament with some of their Gulf neighbours, despite the current delicate political situation in the area which has left Qatar as a near-pariah state under Saudi Arabian-led sanctions.
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