IHe is back. And this time, it might actually happen. The idea of an official Club World Cup has been brewing for decades, but it could finally get off the ground in 2028. Sixteen teams, played over four consecutive June weekends in the Northern Hemisphere, with one winner. Please insert your own personal reaction emoji here.
As always, it may depend on where you sit. If you’re a cash-strapped administrator trying to keep your club’s game running smoothly, you’ll instinctively take this for granted. Enhanced global TV and sponsor exposure, clearly defined time slots in the calendar and the best players in each hemisphere battling each other in potentially less than favorable weather. Tick, tick, tick.
Yes, at first glance, there will be some fascinating matchups. If it starts from this season, it will involve the last eight Champions League teams – Leinster, La Rochelle, Northampton, Bulls, Bordeaux, Harlequin, Toulouse and Ek Settlement Chiefs – plus Super Rugby’s top six teams and possibly even the two leading Japanese clubs. New Zealand’s current top teams – Blues and Hurricanes – against Leinster and Toulouse? Spectators from both the north and the south are likely to attend a game or two, if only out of curiosity.
But let’s pause for a moment. How about a significant impact on the traditional pillars of the club’s game? While there are some clever tricks in the scheduling – the knockout stages of the Champions League will be canceled every four years to facilitate the development of new concepts – are the architects too smart? For example, downplaying perhaps the most high-profile club rugby tournament in the world in favor of Japan League leaders Toshiba Brave Wolves and Saitama Wild Knights, who play Exeter and Northampton in June, is a real shame. Is it progress?
More importantly, what about the players? Imagine you are an international supporter from the Northern Hemisphere. You’ve just slogged through the endlessly demanding World Cup warm-up camp, followed by the tournament itself, and fought your way to the finish line of the grueling Six Nations Championship (one less leisure weekend than ever before) and now you’re in a dark room Read the diary horizontally.
Under the proposed new arrangements, the domestic club season will end early, which will require another peak in May. Next up is the final stage of the Club World Cup. Next up are more potential long-haul flights to complete fixtures in the new Nations League, which will replace traditional drop-in tours from 2026. What follows is a rushed few weeks’ break before digging in deep to try and win selection for the English and UEFA Nations League. The Irish Lions toured the following summer. Presumably Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing” will become the official catwalk song? Either that or Abba’s money, money, money.
However, anything other than blind optimism is likely to be met with objections. Admittedly, on the positive side, this could bring more order to what has previously been the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party masquerading as rugby’s global schedule. France’s top 14 may no longer last until June, nor will Europe’s so-called exciting club competition be tightly sandwiched between rounds of crucial domestic competition.
Another familiar cry is that if rugby authorities don’t create some sort of coherent world club championship, someone else will. “Our clubs, along with clubs across Europe and the Southern Hemisphere, have received offers from Monaco, Abu Dhabi and most recently South Africa,” Mark McCafferty, then chief executive of Premier League Rugby, said back in 2010 Just means. Stakeholders within rugby are not going to create this, someone else will create this and we will find an outsider coming in. ” Fourteen years later, golf and other sports can attest that the same argument still holds true.
The big difference now, though, is that English clubs are desperately trying to stay afloat. At last count, their collective losses were close to £25m in the last financial year alone, and Newcastle are yet to announce their annual results. Super Rugby investors are also not flush with cash. While France’s top teams are in danger of disappearing into another commercial stratosphere, they also recognize the value of a collective footing in the wider global market.
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So while some credit should go to those who spent countless years sitting in committee rooms throwing diaries at each other in search of workable dates, there’s also a sense of the same old, same old. In terms of player and team loads, it’s the same old attempt to force a quart into a pint jug. The same old flawed logic: in this case, canceling the knockout rounds of the Champions League every four years will not damage the image of the competition in the other three editions. So does the neglect of an overheated planet that hardly needs any more pro football teams flying around the world than it does now.
Some will counter that the precedent has long been established with South African teams already participating in the Rugby Union Championship and Champions Cup. And money is often the loudest. Given the financial precarity of rugby clubs, doing nothing is out of the question. It’s a moonshot that could one day open previously unreachable horizons: preparing us to push for a world club title and maybe even a major rugby final in the Middle East. It won’t be to everyone’s taste, but hey, the future is on the way.
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