Mark wrote:
1960-2004: 2 clubs playing in it, from by far the dominant
continents in football. The obvious weakness was that it
wasn't open to teams from other continents, but from a
pragmatic perspective that made some sense. (Although now I
know that the North Americans tried to compete in the late
1980s and got turned down, I'm not so sure that's a valid
excuse.)
Not letting teams from Mexico or the NASL into the
"Intercontinental Cup" in the 70's - when CONCACAF first looked
for it - was a big minus... but with all those super-stars it's
possible a New York Cosmos or LA Aztecs might have given the
South American/European Champions a run for their money... so of
course, that wasn't going to be allowed to happen. Ignoring the
Asian and African confederations as well probably didn't help
the development of club sides in those continents either. But
did UEFA or CONMEBOL care about the rest of the world? Of course
not. It was 'their' tournament and they were not letting the
footballing equivalent of barbarians in to it!
Which is why the winners of the Intercontinental Cup can't
really claim to be "world champions" when they were only the
"champions" of two of the continents of this planet... out of
seven! So not really champions of any world, just a small bit of
it. In other words, it was a meaningless Mickey Mouse trophy.
2000-2023: 1 (or 2) teams from each continent playing in it. A
genuine World Championship. The obvious weakness was that the
runners-up couldn't claim to have proved themselves to be the
2nd best team in the World.
2025: Too many European teams playing in it. Obvious weakness
being that. It's totally unfair.
I've always thought of the Intercontinental Cup from 1960-1998
as equal to the Club World Cup, but given less weight to it
from 1999 to 2004 because there was an official World
Championship by then.
The new format from 2025 is totally unfair, so I'd give
significantly less weight to that. It's probably worth
significantly less than the Intercontinental Cup after 1999.
What do you guys think?
Who said anything about fair? Do you really think 'fair' comes
in to it with modern day football, especially anything involving
FIFA?! The only thing driving these spurious "world" club
tournaments is money. Club football at the top level is rolling
in money and FIFA wanted a slice of that pie.
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