Perhaps the most pointless football tournament ever devised gets started for the 11th time tomorrow.
The FIFA Club World Cup starts in Morocco with Western Sydney Wanderers, from Australia, Algeria’s ES Setif, Cruz Azul from Mexico, New Zealand’s Auckland City and the host nation’s Moghreb Tetouan battling it out in the opening rounds of the competition.
They are all vying to win a place in the semi-finals, which will be played next Tuesday and Wednesday, when the representatives of South America – Argentina’s San Lorenzo de Almagro – and European champions Real Madrid roll up to join the circus.
Just quite what the value of this competition is to the boys from the Santiago Bernabeu is questionable – anything but success at a canter will be regarded as abject failure.
However, what is plainly obvious is that the competition – despite having sparked little or no interest since it started in 2000 before becoming an annual event in 2005 – is of great value to some people.
While Morocco was quite happy to be kicked out of the Africa Cup of Nations after refusing to host the 2015 finals on the grounds of the Ebola virus, they have had no such qualms in welcoming FIFA, their sponsors, their corporate entourage and of course the whole carnival that goes with having Real Madrid’s “galácticos” into their country – what a surprise!
