Real Madrid head coach Carlo Ancelotti confirmed that his club will reject an invitation to 2025’s reimagined Club World Cup during an interview with Il Giornale.
Rather than being held towards the end of the year, in a mini-tournament format that usually involves playing in the semi-finals and a final for a Champions League winning-team, the Club World Cup will now be almost a month long while contested in the United States at the end of the club season and the height of summer.
Relevo revealed that Real Madrid is opposed to playing in the competition last week, with an anonymous source from the club cited as saying that FIFA is “going to kill the players” with an excessive workload which for its stars could mean playing up to 72 matches in 2024/2025.
“Players and clubs will not participate in that tournament. A single Madrid game is worth €20 million ($21.5 million) and FIFA wants to give us that figure for the entire tournament. Like us, several clubs will decline the invitation,” Ancelotti predicted.
It is interesting that Ancelotti says money for participation in the Club World Cup is as such when various outlets including Mundo Deportivo have put that particular figure at $53.8 million (€50 million).
One thing is for sure, the winners of the 2022 and 2024 Champions League finals not heading to the United States for the inaugural edition of the revamped championship would be embarrassing for football’s global governing body, though it appears that Madrid still plans to play FIFA’s 2024 Intercontinental Cup in December.
Famous for his passages in both prestigious institutes, Ancelotti explained that AC Milan and Madrid are the clubs of his life.
“Milan is in my heart: I played [there], I was a coach, it is a big part of my professional life”, he said, before calling Madrid “special”.
“Madrid is Madrid. What’s better? History is respected here, all the footballers of the past have their photo in the Ciudad Deportiva,” he concluded on this.
Forbes
