The new rule that further undermines FIFA’s disastrous Club World Cup – and affects Chelsea & Man City

In theory, the first edition of the brand new relaunched and revamped Club World Cup will take place in just seven months’ time, with Chelsea and Manchester City among the participants. FIFA want their new baby to be the pinnacle of club football, a global showcase of the best teams on the planet every four years. The only problem is that almost nobody involved seems to want it to happen.

Sponsors have shied away, and only at the end of October did FIFA finally unveil a deal with electronics company Hisense. Brands with existing agreements with football’s global governing body, like Coca-Cola and Adidas, are locked in a dispute with FIFA, arguing that they should not have to pay additional money to have their branding plastered across the competition.

Meanwhile, broadcasters have showed a complete lack of interest – having initially announced that they expected to raise at least $4bn (£3.1bn) from television rights, FIFA had to call an emergency meeting with prospective broadcasters in September because the best offer they had was a blanket global deal from Apple worth a reported $1b (£780m). There has yet to be a breakthrough.

All of which leaves the financial status of the competition in a very problematic place, because FIFA had initially promised the 32 clubs competing a prize pot of $2.5bn (£1.9bn) but may not have the income to actually put it up. The proposed prize pool keeps dropping, and has still not been confirmed – and nor have the dates of the fixtures, although the 12 stadium that will play host in the United States have at least been agreed and announced.

Gianni Infantino hoped the Club World Cup would be a money-spinner that could rival the Champions League and give FIFA another source of income outside of the World Cup – but their offering is now looking more like a precariously-balanced house of cards than a soundly-structured football tournament. One breath could send the whole thing toppling over, and clubs, players, sponsors and broadcasters are all inhaling.

The latest controversy, which is mild but perhaps instructive, concerns the publishing of the competition rulebook, and in particular rule 4.2(d) which requires all clubs involved to play their strongest teams throughout the competition – a requirement which comes just after players, including Manchester City’s Rodri, started talking about the possibility of going on strike over the ever-expanding and increasingly demanding schedule.

In the background, players unions are already suing FIFA over a lack of consultation regarding extensions to the fixture list, of which the new-fangled Club World Cup is perhaps the most prominent. Meanwhile, key players within the continental game have also lashed out at FIFA, including La Liga president Javier Tebas, who said of the possibility of a strike that “if this strike serves to solve the issue of the calendars… So that the Club World Cup does not exist, so that the dates are better restructured, then it is welcome.”

In other words, the players involved in this tournament don’t want to play it, at least in the case of European teams. South American sides have traditionally taken the Club World Cup, in its shorter incarnation, quite seriously, and perhaps players from other corners of the globe are relishing the chance to test their skills against the best European clubs and to have a spotlight shone on their skills. But the European teams generate the revenue – or will do if there ever is any – and if their players refuse to play or kick up a fuss, then FIFA will have a big problem.

This rule is an attempt to assuage broadcaster and sponsor concerns that the tournament will have an audience, by forcing clubs to play their big names and not give them a much-needed holiday instead. Similarly, FIFA announced that Inter Miami would represent the host nation in the Club World Cup arbitrarily, rather than through a pre-agreed qualification process, in the hope that attaching Lionel Messi’s name to the tournament would boost its appeal.

If the players down tools, then, there would be a huge backlash among sponsors and broadcasters and perhaps even a slew of lawsuits. FIFA have, as a sop offering, told competing clubs that they won’t be required to release their players for the June internationals which take place just before the tournament starts, but so far the only real leverage that FIFA has is the clubs, who want to compete for the prize money and will make sure their players are along for the ride as a result, just as they drag them on international pre-season tours.

Which will probably work if they can offer up the prize money that was promised, which stood at a minimum of $50m (£38.7m) for each competing club. If they can raise the broadcast and sponsorship revenue that Infantino initially forecast, then that won’t be an issue, but that seems to be a distant prospect – and now clubs have piped up, demanding that FIFA dip into its financial reserves to pay the money.

That’s a massive problem for FIFA, who only developed and promoted this tournament because they saw it as a way to generate fresh revenue. Spending their reserves would cost them money instead – and it would also set them up for a conflict with national associations who would likely be angry seeing money which could be spent on grassroots initiatives and other developmental projects going straight to the biggest and wealthiest clubs, who already enjoy a gigantic slice of football’s economy.

So, FIFA are trying to find the money they need by making up new rules to make the competition more appealing to disinterested broadcasters and sponsors, and in doing so they risk angering the players, who may only be content to play if strongarmed into it by their clubs, who are in it for the money that FIFA don’t currently have. It’s a loop that can be closed is a satisfactory fashion, but if Infantino gets one part of it wrong, then the whole tournament could disintegrate amid expensive and embarrassing recriminations. FIFA are running out of time to avoid that.

The grand frustration is that the idea of the Club World Cup is quite tempting. A meaningful competition to determine the best club side in the world, with the potential to financially benefit teams from less wealthy footballing nations, has a lot of appeal. Unfortunately, FIFA are in danger of overpromising and underdelivering at a time when their greed is making the fixture list longer by the year, with elite players close to snapping. There are seven months left to fix a plethora of issues. Fail, and the tournament could go down in history for its failures rather than for the football played.