Eight weeks from now, in Washington DC, Al Ain embark on what, if Fifa have their way, will be the most transformative event in club football. The Club World Cup, with its vastly expanded 32-team format, has its sceptics, but those of them who are on the outside looking in would very happily park their doubts for the privilege of being among the pioneers at this big-scale upgrade of the tournament.
For a start, it is lucrative. Al Ain, there thanks to their stirring run all the way to a victorious AFC Champions League final last May, will collect just under $10 million as minimum and they would earn themselves another sizeable portion of the overall $1bn prize pot if they defy expectations and progress from the group phase into the knockout rounds. The prospects of that may look slender, given the Abu Dhabi club’s irregular 2024/25, a campaign with little of the zest that carried to last season’s continental success. But Al Ain can at least look at their Club World Cup opponents and know they are not alone heading for the showpiece with imperfect momentum.
In Group G, which Al Ain share with Manchester City, Juventus and Wydad Casablanca – WAC – no team will reach the United States reflecting back on a season as domineering as those that gained them their invitations to the competition. The criteria for qualifying is either to have won your premier continental trophy within the previous four seasons or to have shown long-term consistency at that level. Short-term, recent slumps are not part of the equation.
If Al Ain can take some encouragement from their recent Pro League wins against Baniyas and Al Urooba, their next few weeks will be a sustained catch-up, chasing a top-three finish and with it access to AFC competition in 2025/26. That mirrors the situation of Juventus, against whom Al Ain begin their Club World Cup campaign on June 18. Juve went into Wednesday's Serie A meeting with Parma seeking to clamber into the top four in Italy – the entry-level to next season’s Uefa Champions League.
The two clubs’ respective falls from grace over the past nine months are reflected in managerial turmoil. Al Ain are on their second head coach since Hernan Crespo, architect of the Champions League triumph, left his post in November. Juventus are on their fourth, including caretakers, since Max Allegri dramatically terminated his second spell in charge of the bianconeri last May.
Igor Tudor, who replaced the sacked Thiago Motta last month, is the new boss, although you have to use the word ‘caretaker’ cautiously in his earshot. “It’s an ugly word, ‘caretaker,” said Tudor. “Any coach can be fired even if he’s got a five-year contract signed. All coaches live from day to day.”
Motta learned that in the end. He survived just 265 days into the three-year contract he had signed with Juve last summer. Tudor, 47, a former Juventus player and an ex-manager of Galatasaray, Marseille and Lazio among others, has at least had it confirmed his stay will extend to the Club World Cup.
Among his tasks is to help Juventus turn draws into wins. The Motta reign became notorious for its stalemates, 16 of them in Motta’s 40 matches in charge up until heavy losses to Fiorentina and Atalanta led his bosses to end the relationship. For Al Ain, there may be some cheer to be glimpsed in Juve’s habits. If ever you wanted an opponent against whom to seek a solid point to open a major tournament, it would be the draw specialists Juventus.
And if there were any season of the past five when it would be deemed a good time to face the might of Manchester City, the tail-end of 2024/25 would be it. City, the 2023 Uefa Champions League winners and six times English champions in the past seven years, are on course for their lowest finish in the Premier League since their third place of 2016/17. There is as yet no certainty they will make the Premier League’s top five – and so access next season’s Uefa Champions League – although Tuesday’s late win against Aston Villa was helpful in keeping them on course.
“It has been a bad season,” admitted Pep Guardiola, the City manager, suggesting that even winning the FA Cup – City play in a semi-final this weekend – would not change his view of that.
As for WAC – who Al Ain will meet in their last group G match, on June 26, three days after clashing with City – this has been a jittery season. From the heights of 2021/22, when Walid Regragui, now the head coach of Morocco, guided WAC to a double of CAF Champions League and Moroccan league title, the gradient has been mostly downwards. They finished with silver medals for the main African and domestic prizes in 2022/23, Regragui by then galvanising the national team; in 2023/24 they failed to qualify for any CAF tournament. The best finish available to them in Morocco’s Botola league this term is second, with RS Berkane having wrapped up the title early.
There have been several times during the current campaign in which the position of WAC head coach, the South African Rhulani Mokwena, looked almost as precarious as Crespo’s did last autumn or Motta’s in March.
Last week, the golden, gyroscopic Club World Cup trophy was in Casablanca, part of its tour around the cities whose clubs will gather in America in June. Mokwena posed with it. He surveyed “a very strong group G,” but insisted “we can surprise a lot of people.”
But the time the trophy had moved on, next stop Dortmund, he was inclined to agree with several other coaches that the physical proximity to the glittering trophy is no bearer of good fortune. The trophy’s arrival in a city can look like a jinx. It arrived in Casablanca to coincide with a seven-match winless run for WAC. When Fifa showed it off in Manchester in February City had just lost 4-2 to Paris Saint-Germain and were about to go down 5-1 at Arsenal. Abu Dhabi had its turn in February, coinciding with Al Ain’s defeat, to a stoppage time goal, at Al Wahda.
But whoever ends up taking long-term custody of the weighty, eye-catching prize come the final in New Jersey on July 13 will be delighted to take it home. They will probably also feel fatigued. It has been a long season already for most, although the contenders from South America, whose domestic and continental campaigns run through a calendar year rather than from August to May, may feel fresher than the rest.
There will be some form teams conspicuously absent. Liverpool are not involved, their last European Cup dating from back in 2019. The Club World Cup may not have the reigning champions of Asia, Africa or Europe there, given that the 2024/25 finals of the Champions Leagues in each of those confederations are yet to be played. That’s a consequence of the timeframe used for qualifying. Neither Arsenal nor Barcelona, both involved in next week’s European Cup semi-finals, had achieved enough over the previous four years to make the cut.
Neither Pyramids of Egypt or Orlando Pirates of South Africa, one of who will reach the CAF Champions League final, are heading to the US. Unless Al Hilal triumph in the Jeddah mini-tournament that will over the next 11 days establish the new lords of AFC club football, the 2025 Asian champion will be watching events in America from afar.
Al Hilal, likely to deposed next month as Saudi Arabia’s league champions, will nonetheless spearhead the Saudi challenge, with cause for optimism as they take on a group including Pachuca, who currently sit eighth in the Mexican league, and RB Salzburg, who finished 34th out of 36 in the Uefa Champions League first phase. Al Hilal’s first fixture is a stimulating meeting with Real Madrid.
Esperance of Tunis must play Flamengo of Brazil and then try to fathom which version of inconsistent Chelsea will turn up for their last group match. Al Ahly of Cairo have the privilege of opening the tournament, against Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami, and will close their group against Porto, who have had a tough domestic campaign, one that could yet have Porto finishing outside the top three in the Portuguese table for the first time this century. They look like another stumbling giant and, for that, part of an intriguing mosaic that promises a genuinely open competition with a high prospect of surprises.
