Real Madrid's Jude Bellingham pours water on his face to cool down during a break in play during the group phase match against Al Hilal at Hard Rock Stadium in Florida. Reuters
Real Madrid's Jude Bellingham pours water on his face to cool down during a break in play during the group phase match against Al Hilal at Hard Rock Stadium in Florida. Reuters
Real Madrid's Jude Bellingham pours water on his face to cool down during a break in play during the group phase match against Al Hilal at Hard Rock Stadium in Florida. Reuters
Real Madrid's Jude Bellingham pours water on his face to cool down during a break in play during the group phase match against Al Hilal at Hard Rock Stadium in Florida. Reuters

Player welfare and empty seats: Fifa must learn lessons from Club World Cup ahead of 2026 World Cup


Steve Luckings
  • English
  • Arabic

Fifa's new flagship Club World Cup came to a close on Sunday with English side Chelsea crowned champions of the 32-team competition.

Never one to pass up the chance of hyperbole, Fifa president Gianni Infantino has already declared it "the most successful club competition in the world.”

The financial windfall for the London club was staggering, earning just over $114 million for one month's work.

The other participating clubs didn't fare too badly either, sharing the rest of the $1 billion pot, by far the biggest payout in Fifa's history.

But the expanded Club World Cup was not without its problems. Seen as a dress rehearsal for next year's World Cup, to be held in the USA, Canada and Mexico, empty seats marked the tournament. Slashed ticket prices, searing heat, unfavourable kick-off times, weather-delayed matches and player complaints over the standard of pitches are just a few of the areas Fifa must address before the 2026 global finals.

Dangerously high temperatures and violent storms

The temperature was over 32° Celsius for many matches played across the US, with humidity that made pitch-side conditions feel closer to 38°C.

“Honestly, the heat is incredible,” Chelsea midfielder Enzo Fernandez said. “Playing in this temperature is very dangerous.”

Six games were delayed by weather for a total of 8 hours, 29 minutes, raising questions over the suitability of the US for next year's World Cup during a time of global warming. Only four of the 11 US World Cup venues have roofs, including one that isn't temperature controlled.

At the 1994 World Cup in the US, just seven of 52 games had local nighttime starts to allow for matches to be broadcast during the evenings for European television.

Violent storms also wreaked havoc across the tournament.

Benfica's group phase match against Auckland was delayed by weather at the Inter & Co Stadium, Orlando, Florida. Reuters
Benfica's group phase match against Auckland was delayed by weather at the Inter & Co Stadium, Orlando, Florida. Reuters

US rules mean play is stopped when lightning is recorded within a 10-mile radius, and cannot restart until 30 minutes after it finishes. Two Benfica games, against Auckland and Chelsea, were delayed for about 120 minutes.

There were only four minutes left when that Chelsea game was held up. The Blues were winning 1-0, but Benfica levelled before Chelsea won in extra time.

"I think it's a joke, to be honest," Chelsea boss Enzo Maresca said at the time.

Possible solutions are planning around kick-off times to avoid playing in hot cities in the middle of the day, as so often happened at the Club World Cup, while seven of the venues used this summer won't be used in 2026.

Player welfare

For the top players, the Club World Cup meant they likely faced three consecutive years of summer tournaments, following the European Championship and Copa America last year and leading to the World Cup for national teams in 2026.

The two finalists, Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain, played their 64th and 65th competitive games respectively since mid-August. Each team will have 33-35 days off before 2025/26 openers.

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola said the impact of the new tournament might not be known until midway through next season.

“I may say: ‘So listen, we are a disaster. We are exhausted. The [Club] World Cup destroyed us,'” he admitted.

Sergio Marchi, the president of world players’ union FIFPro, accused Fifa of choosing to “continue increasing its income at the expense of the players’ bodies and health”. Marchi likened football's governing body's approach to the ‘bread and circuses’ tactics used by Emperor Nero in ancient Rome and warned there could be no repeat of playing matches in such extreme heat at next summer’s World Cup.

Juventus' Francisco Conceicao pours water over himself during a group phase match against Wydad Casablanca. Reuters
Juventus' Francisco Conceicao pours water over himself during a group phase match against Wydad Casablanca. Reuters

Other coaches expressed their concerns over player welfare.

Juventus coach Igor Tudor said that 10 of his players asked to be substituted during their last-16 defeat to Real Madrid at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami.

"The exhaustion was incredible," Tudor said after the match. "There's the tension of this match, which burns your energy. Then there's this heat, which really gets to you, and the third thing that completes the conditions is playing in this humidity."

Borussia Dortmund subs watched the first half of one game from the changing room to avoid the sun - and manager Niko Kovac said he was "sweating like I've just come out of a sauna" during his side's group win over Mamelodi Sundowns in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Fifa guidelines currently rely on the wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT), a measure of heat stress combining temperature and humidity.

If the WBGT exceeds 32°C, cooling breaks are mandatory in both halves of a match.

FIFpro has said breaks should be introduced once the WBGT goes above 28°C, and matches should be delayed if it exceeds 32°C.

Empty stadiums

Among the lasting lessons was Fifa's decision to dramatically drop ticket costs as some kick-off times approached, which could impact decisions by fans thinking of attending next year's World Cup.

Fifa lowered the cost to attend the Chelsea-Fluminense semi-final at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, to $13.40 from $473.90. Ticket for Sunday's final between Chelsea and European champions Paris Saint-Germain dropped from $330 to $199.60.

Four matches failed to get more than 10,000 fans, with the lowest attendance the 3,412 who watched Mamelodi Sundowns beat Ulsan HD 1-0.

The lowest attendance at the 2025 Fifa Club World Cup was the 3,412 who watched Mamelodi Sundowns beat Ulsan HD 1-0 at Inter & Co Stadium, Orlando, Florida. Reuters
The lowest attendance at the 2025 Fifa Club World Cup was the 3,412 who watched Mamelodi Sundowns beat Ulsan HD 1-0 at Inter & Co Stadium, Orlando, Florida. Reuters

There will be 104 matches at next year's expanded 48-team World Cup and many are likely to be on weekday afternoons. Fifa has not said whether it will use dynamic pricing at that tournament and has declined to comment on discounting.

The 63 matches at the 2025 Club World Cup attracted crowds of around 2.49 million, about 62% of the listed capacity. Fifa has refused to comment on the estimated 1.5 million unfilled seats.

One reason given for low attendances have been the kick-off times, with many being at noon or 3pm on a weekday afternoon.

Tiny US television audience

Empty seats at the stadiums was only half the problem Fifa must address ahead of the 2026 World Cup.

Streaming service DAZN bought world rights for the Club World Cup, sublicensed 24 of the 63 matches to TNT Sports, which averaged 418,000 viewers for the first 23 matches with English-language commentary on TNT, TBS and truTV. Seventeen matches sublicensed to TelevisaUnivision with Spanish commentary averaged 551,000.

By comparison, NBC's networks averaged 510,000 viewers per match window for the English Premier League in 2024/25, regular-season Major League Baseball is averaging 1.841 million this year on Fox and 1.74 million on the cable network ESPN. The NFL averaged 17.5 million during the 2024 regular season.

DAZN has not yet released figures but says it will during the week.

Name: Peter Dicce

Title: Assistant dean of students and director of athletics

Favourite sport: soccer

Favourite team: Bayern Munich

Favourite player: Franz Beckenbauer

Favourite activity in Abu Dhabi: scuba diving in the Northern Emirates 

 

How green is the expo nursery?

Some 400,000 shrubs and 13,000 trees in the on-site nursery

An additional 450,000 shrubs and 4,000 trees to be delivered in the months leading up to the expo

Ghaf, date palm, acacia arabica, acacia tortilis, vitex or sage, techoma and the salvadora are just some heat tolerant native plants in the nursery

Approximately 340 species of shrubs and trees selected for diverse landscape

The nursery team works exclusively with organic fertilisers and pesticides

All shrubs and trees supplied by Dubai Municipality

Most sourced from farms, nurseries across the country

Plants and trees are re-potted when they arrive at nursery to give them room to grow

Some mature trees are in open areas or planted within the expo site

Green waste is recycled as compost

Treated sewage effluent supplied by Dubai Municipality is used to meet the majority of the nursery’s irrigation needs

Construction workforce peaked at 40,000 workers

About 65,000 people have signed up to volunteer

Main themes of expo is  ‘Connecting Minds, Creating the Future’ and three subthemes of opportunity, mobility and sustainability.

Expo 2020 Dubai to open in October 2020 and run for six months

SECRET%20INVASION
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDirector%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Ali%20Selim%20%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStars%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Samuel%20L%20Jackson%2C%20Olivia%20Coleman%2C%20Kingsley%20Ben-Adir%2C%20Emilia%20Clarke%20%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%203%2F5%26nbsp%3B%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
'Downton Abbey: A New Era'

Director: Simon Curtis

 

Cast: Hugh Bonneville, Elizabeth McGovern, Maggie Smith, Michelle Dockery, Laura Carmichael, Jim Carter and Phyllis Logan

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Profile of MoneyFellows

Founder: Ahmed Wadi

Launched: 2016

Employees: 76

Financing stage: Series A ($4 million)

Investors: Partech, Sawari Ventures, 500 Startups, Dubai Angel Investors, Phoenician Fund

Paatal Lok season two

Directors: Avinash Arun, Prosit Roy 

Stars: Jaideep Ahlawat, Ishwak Singh, Lc Sekhose, Merenla Imsong

Rating: 4.5/5

Jewel of the Expo 2020

252 projectors installed on Al Wasl dome

13.6km of steel used in the structure that makes it equal in length to 16 Burj Khalifas

550 tonnes of moulded steel were raised last year to cap the dome

724,000 cubic metres is the space it encloses

Stands taller than the leaning tower of Pisa

Steel trellis dome is one of the largest single structures on site

The size of 16 tennis courts and weighs as much as 500 elephants

Al Wasl means connection in Arabic

World’s largest 360-degree projection surface

Studying addiction

This month, Dubai Medical College launched the Middle East’s first master's programme in addiction science.

Together with the Erada Centre for Treatment and Rehabilitation, the college offers a two-year master’s course as well as a one-year diploma in the same subject.

The move was announced earlier this year and is part of a new drive to combat drug abuse and increase the region’s capacity for treating drug addiction.

Sole survivors
  • Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
  • George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
  • Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
  • Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
SPEC%20SHEET%3A%20APPLE%20IPHONE%2014
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDisplay%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%C2%A06.1%22%20Super%20Retina%20XDR%20OLED%2C%202532%20x%201170%2C%20460ppi%2C%20HDR%2C%20True%20Tone%2C%20P3%2C%201200%20nits%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EProcessor%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%C2%A0A15%20Bionic%2C%206-core%20CPU%2C%205-core%20GPU%2C%2016-core%20Neural%20Engine%C2%A0%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EMemory%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%C2%A06GB%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECapacity%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%C2%A0128%2F256%2F512GB%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EPlatform%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%C2%A0iOS%2016%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EMain%20camera%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%C2%A0Dual%2012MP%20main%20(f%2F1.5)%20%2B%2012MP%20ultra-wide%20(f%2F2.4)%3B%202x%20optical%2C%205x%20digital%3B%20Photonic%20Engine%2C%20Deep%20Fusion%2C%20Smart%20HDR%204%2C%20Portrait%20Lighting%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EMain%20camera%20video%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%C2%A04K%20%40%2024%2F25%2F3060fps%2C%20full-HD%20%40%2025%2F30%2F60fps%2C%20HD%20%40%2030fps%3B%20HD%20slo-mo%20%40%20120%2F240fps%3B%20night%2C%20time%20lapse%2C%20cinematic%2C%20action%20modes%3B%20Dolby%20Vision%2C%204K%20HDR%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EFront%20camera%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%C2%A012MP%20TrueDepth%20(f%2F1.9)%2C%20Photonic%20Engine%2C%20Deep%20Fusion%2C%20Smart%20HDR%204%3B%20Animoji%2C%20Memoji%3B%20Portrait%20Lighting%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EFront%20camera%20video%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%204K%20%40%2024%2F25%2F3060fps%2C%20full-HD%20%40%2025%2F30%2F60fps%2C%20HD%20slo-mo%20%40%20120fps%3B%20night%2C%20time%20lapse%2C%20cinematic%2C%20action%20modes%3B%20Dolby%20Vision%2C%204K%20HDR%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EBattery%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%C2%A03279%20mAh%2C%C2%A0up%20to%2020h%20video%2C%2016h%20streaming%20video%2C%2080h%20audio%3B%20fast%20charge%20to%2050%25%20in%2030m%3B%20MagSafe%2C%20Qi%20wireless%20charging%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EConnectivity%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%C2%A0Wi-Fi%2C%20Bluetooth%205.3%2C%20NFC%20(Apple%20Pay)%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EBiometrics%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Face%20ID%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EI%2FO%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%C2%A0Lightning%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECards%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%C2%A0Dual%20eSIM%20%2F%20eSIM%20%2B%20SIM%20(US%20models%20use%20eSIMs%20only)%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EColours%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%C2%A0Blue%2C%20midnight%2C%20purple%2C%20starlight%2C%20Product%20Red%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EIn%20the%20box%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%C2%A0iPhone%2014%2C%20USB-C-to-Lightning%20cable%2C%20one%20Apple%20sticker%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EPrice%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%C2%A0Dh3%2C399%20%2F%20Dh3%2C799%20%2F%20Dh4%2C649%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
THE BIO:

Sabri Razouk, 74

Athlete and fitness trainer 

Married, father of six

Favourite exercise: Bench press

Must-eat weekly meal: Steak with beans, carrots, broccoli, crust and corn

Power drink: A glass of yoghurt

Role model: Any good man

Favourite book: ‘The Art of Learning’ by Josh Waitzkin

Favourite film: Marvel movies

Favourite parkour spot in Dubai: Residence towers in Jumeirah Beach Residence

ESSENTIALS

The flights 
Fly Etihad or Emirates from the UAE to Moscow from 2,763 return per person return including taxes. 
Where to stay 
Trips on the Golden Eagle Trans-Siberian cost from US$16,995 (Dh62,414) per person, based on two sharing.

The burning issue

The internal combustion engine is facing a watershed moment – major manufacturer Volvo is to stop producing petroleum-powered vehicles by 2021 and countries in Europe, including the UK, have vowed to ban their sale before 2040. The National takes a look at the story of one of the most successful technologies of the last 100 years and how it has impacted life in the UAE. 

Read part four: an affection for classic cars lives on

Read part three: the age of the electric vehicle begins

Read part one: how cars came to the UAE

 

The specs: 2018 Mercedes-Benz E 300 Cabriolet

Price, base / as tested: Dh275,250 / Dh328,465

Engine: 2.0-litre four-cylinder

Power: 245hp @ 5,500rpm

Torque: 370Nm @ 1,300rpm

Transmission: Nine-speed automatic

Fuel consumption, combined: 7.0L / 100km

The President's Cake

Director: Hasan Hadi

Starring: Baneen Ahmad Nayyef, Waheed Thabet Khreibat, Sajad Mohamad Qasem 

Rating: 4/5

Madrid Open schedule

Men's semi-finals

Novak Djokovic (1) v Dominic Thiem (5) from 6pm

Stefanos Tsitsipas (8) v Rafael Nadal (2) from 11pm

Women's final

Simona Halep (3) v Kiki Bertens (7) from 8.30pm

Updated: July 17, 2025, 7:10 AM