FIFA wanted in on that sweet, sweet club tournament money, and if that meant a half-baked tournament in the middle of the European domestic season, then so be it.
The shift in the balance of power came at both a club and national level. When Brazil won the World Cup in 1994, it was the last time a South American nation would left the trophy for 28 years. So it was in the Intercontinental Cup. Sao Paolo from Brazil had won the tournament in 1992 and 1993, and Velez Sarsfield did so in 1994, five months after Brazil's penalty shootout win against Italy in Pasadena.
At a club level, though, something had changed. In Europe, football was corporatising at a phenomenal speed, and the year of its inception was the first of those three years. In England, it would be the inception of the Premier League. But this was small beer in comparison with what was happening at UEFA, where the Champions League was superseding the European Cup. This was a competition designed for television and for spectacle.
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Mini-groups would prevent anyone like Steaua Bucharest winning it again by protecting the biggest clubs a little from one-off slip-ups. There would be many more matches, with an emphasis placed on live broadcasting and lucrative television contracts. Sponsorship costs would also increase. It even had its own anthem, like it was a nation state of something.
And whole correlation does not necessarily equal causation, it is striking, the extent to which everything. In the Intercontinental Cup European teams won the next five matches in a row. Were the Europeans trying harder? The annual match didn't seem much more important in Europe, and certainly still nowhere near as much as in South America.
But a big change was coming. It was a temporary one, but it set in train the sequence of events that led us to where we ended up. And it could hardly be said that or hadn't been suggested before.
In 1970, the FIFA Executive Committee proposed the creation of a multi continental Club World Cup, not limited to Europe and South America but including also the other confederations; the idea did not go forward due to UEFA resistance.
In 1973, French newspaper L'Equipe stepped in as they had over the formation of the European Cup a couple of decades earlier, volunteering to sponsor a Club World Cup contested by the champions of Europe, South America, North America and Africa, with a competition to potentially take place in Paris between September and October 1974, with an eventual final to be held at Parc des Princes. Again, the European representatives baulked at the idea
L'Equipe tried once again in 1975 to create a Club World Cup, in which participants would have been the four semi-finalists of the European Cup, both finalists of the Copa Libertadores, as well as the African and Asian champions. UEFA, via president Artemio Franchi, declined once again and the proposal failed. This idea for a multi continental, FIFA-endorsed Club World Cup was even endorsed by João Havelange in his campaigning for FIFA presidency in 1974.
This was all in the space of four short years, and at a time when the reputation of the Intercontinental Cup couldn't have been much lower. But by the end of the 1990s, things had changed. The worst of the tournament's excesses of the 1960s and 1970s were starting to slide from view.
It mattered in terms of football's byzantine politics, too. FIFA ran the World Cup, and that was bigger than ever, but the club game had changed, and FIFA had little way to tap into those riches without coming up with a tournament of their own. The Intercontinental Cup had come under their wing from 1980, but it hadn't been hugely successful, and then UEFA rewrote the rule book with the Champions League.
The 2000 World Club Championship was FIFA’s attempt to dip their toe into the club game, and it didn’t go particularly well. There would be eight teams in two group, competing in two host cities, with the winners of each group playing in the final. It was the same mistake as UEFA had made when they expanded the European Championships two decades earlier. If you only have one qualification place from a group, you reduce interest in it.
The decision over where to host the tournament was left until seven months before it was due to start, and when it was announced it was confirmed as Brazil, with Sao Paolo and the Maracana hosting. ISL, the media rights company founded by Horst Dassler which would collapse in 2001 owing £153 million and which was found to be hopelessly corrupt, with charges extending to fraud, embezzlement and the falsification of documents, would handle the media rights.
The ‘qualification’ process, such as it was, was also highly questionable. Manchester United being invited as European champions was no great surprise. Real Madrid, as winners of the 1998 Intercontinental Cup, raised an eyebrow. Africa wasn’t represented by anyone south of Casablanca and Asia wasn’t represented by anybody east of Saudi Arabia, whole South America’s entire representation was clubs from the two cities hosting the tournament.
In England, the involvement of Manchester United caused a scandal because the tournament was to be played in January 2000, a month which involves two rounds of the FA Cup. United were under pressure from the FA and going to Brazil was seen as supportive of England’s bid to host the 2006 World Cup, but it was also highly beneficial for a team that had played 62 matches in pursuit of six trophies the year before to have a month off in Rio in the middle of the domestic season.
The British press were, of course, theircompletely normal, sane selves about it all. United were ‘drawn’ to play Aston Villa in the Third Round, with Villa receiving a bye to the next round. Manchester United were accused of ‘killing the FA Cup’, but it was errant nonsense, really. A tournament in anything like a healthy shape would have easily been able to withstand one club not being in it, even if they were the holders. But the FA had already been in decline for a few years, by this point.
The issue with the tournament was evident from the opening match when Real Madrid beat Al-Nassr 3-1 in Sao Paolo. The Estadio Morumbi held 73,000 people, but only 12,000 turned out to watch. Crowds were big when the two Brazilian sides were playing, but not otherwise. Two days later, Raja Casablanca vs Al-Nassr was watched by 3,000.
In the other group, the match between South Melbourne and the Mexican club Necaxa was watched by 5,000. Because only the group winners progressed to a final, the final round of group matches in one of the groups were dead rubbers. The tournament certainly didn’t reek of the elite opulence that one might expect, from a tournament being held to decide the world club champions.
And as for Manchester United, well, they crashed and burned in this tournament, held to a 1-1 draw by Necaxa in their opening match, defear to Vasco da Gama in their second effectively put them out of the tournament in their second, with a 2-0 win against South Melbourne in their final match only offering the vaguest of fig leaves for an underwhelming performance. Real Madrid at least pushed their involvement to the final round of group matches before getting eliminated by the other host team, Corinthians.
The final, in keeping with many previous editions of the Copa Libertadores, ended in a goalless draw and Corinthians winning the title in penalty kicks. As winners, Corinthians received$6 million in prize money, while Vasco da Gama received $5 million. Necaxa beat Real Madrid in the match for third place to claim $4 million. Real Madrid received $3 million, and the other remaining teams were awarded $2.5 million.
And that, it rather felt, was the most important thing. Manchester United, meanwhile, only lost once in the Premier League after their return from Brazil and lifted the Premier League title again. The World Club Championship, it turned out, hadn’t reallymattered to them that much in the first place.
Did Manchester United‘kill the FA Cup’ as has occasionally been mentioned ever since? No, of course. It is true to say that they were under pressure from the FA and even the British government to travel and had permission to do so. And there are many greater factions that have tarnished the reputation of that competition, including changing demographics and shifts in priority and moving the final to Cardiff for six years. The reputation of the FA Cup was chipped away at over a period of years, but in 2000 Manchester United were convenient scapegoats.
But what the 2000 World Club Championship did signal the deathknell for was the Intercontinental Cup. The match was played that December regardless, with Boca Juniors become the first South American side to lift the trophy since 1994 by beating Real Madrid 2-1, and the following year’s World Club Championship, which was due to be held in Spain, was cancelled due to the collapse of ISL.
The last Intercontinental Cup match to be played in Tokyo came in 2001, with a 1-0 win for Bayern Munich against the holders. The following year it moved to Yokohama, and in 2004 Porto became the last winners of the tournament, beating the Colombian side Once Caldas 8-7 on penalties following a goalless draw. The World Club Championship had been a failure, but the World Club Cup, a halfway house between the Intercontinental Cup and the World Club Championship, was on its way, and after 44 years the Intercontinental Cup was merged in to form it. But this new competition would fail to resolve the question of who the best club team in the world might be, just as its predeccessors had.
Accompanying image byJose Guertzenstein fromPixabay
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