⚽︎Friday, November 17: Is the *Club* World Cup the Real Key to Saudi Arabia's Plans?
⚽︎Friday, November 17: Is the *Club* World Cup the Real Key to Saudi Arabia's Plans?
Amid all the attention on World Cup 2034, the club version's dramatic expansion in 2025 provides a more immediate opportunity for return on investment.
THE FOOTBALL WEEKEND will host a second-ever watch party next month. Come out to GMT Tavern in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village on Sunday, December 3 at 11:30am to watch Manchester City take on Tottenham. The venue opens at 11, and it’s $6 pints until kickoff.
There aren’t a huge number of matches worth your time this weekend with yet another international break under way—blissfully the last of 2023—but there are a few EURO 2024 and World Cup 2026 qualifiers you can catch. More on those below, but first…..
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THE FIRST SAUDI WORLD CUP
It’s not exactly news that Saudi Arabia is attempting to write a new reputation for itself through sport, and particularly through association football. World Cup 2034 would be the crowning achievement in this effort, and on Halloween, FIFA paved the way for Riyadh to host the tournament by announcing there were no other bidders. Granted, they’d only opened the bidding 27 days earlier, via the same press release where they announced a bizarre plan for the 2030 edition to take place across Europe, Africa, and South America. In the call for 2034 bids, the FIFA Council said nations in Asia and Oceania were “invited” to apply on the basis it was only fair to rotate which continent gets to host the tournament. With four continents off the board (North America has 2026), and FIFA’s stiff requirements for prospective hosts, there were suddenly very few nations eligible.
The stars certainly aligned for the Kingdom on that one, though 11 years is a long time in the sporting business—or the governing business, for that matter. Many Saudi moves have been decidedly more short-term, particularly the mad recruitment drive this summer that brought big names like Neymar, Karim Benzema, and Sadio Mané to join Cristiano Ronaldo in the Saudi Pro League. They won’t be around for 2034, and while this shopping spree may just be the first step towards an invite to the cool kids’ party, surely the House of Saud will want to set off some fireworks this decade.
From 2025, the Club World Cup will expand to 32 teams and take place every four years. There will be 12 teams from Europe, six from South America, one from Oceania, and four each from North America, Africa, and Asia. That last conference, the Asian Football Confederation, is the umbrella the Saudi clubs compete under, meaning high performance in the AFC Champions League could land multiple Saudi clubs in the United States two summers from now playing matches against Real Madrid, Liverpool, Bayern Munich, and Inter Milan. Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund took control of four clubs—Al-Ittihad, Al-Nassr, Al-Hilal, and Al-Ahli—before this summer’s massive push to lure top players away from some of Europe’s biggest institutions, even if most are aging.
Now Benzema and N'Golo Kanté play for Al-Ittihad, Ronaldo and Mané play for Al-Nassr, Neymar and Kalidou Koulibaly are at Al-Hilal, and Riyad Mahrez and Roberto Firmino and Édouard Mendy have all joined Al-Ahli. Not everybody’s over 30, either, as Rubén Neves came over from the Premier League at a prime-age 26 and 21-year-old Gabri Veiga arrived as one of Spain’s hottest young midfield prospects. It’s not that these squads are going to beat Barcelona, but they might have been assembled to see off the competition from Japan and Korea and Australia and Qatar to get to Barcelona. From there, once Al-Ahli and Barça are toe-to-toe in New York or Los Angeles, any result is a victory.
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THE CHRONICLES OF ENDRICK
The photos of a 17-year-old phenom arriving for training with the Brazilian national team were almost too spot on. Endrick has drawn hushed allusions to the great one, the King who became the Pope, and he arrived to training this week in a smart color-block shirt with the wide collar spread just so, a time capsule from 1964. It’s not fair to burden any young player with comparisons to Pelé, but the choice of attire suggests Endrick is aware of them and doesn’t mind a bit. He wanted to create the moment.
The Palmeiras forward has shown suave technical confidence and supreme athleticism while scoring 12 goals in 34 Brazilian Série A matches. His fake shot a couple weeks back was pure improvisation and delicate skill, and check out how his shot in a public training session last week exploded in off the bottom of the crossbar. He’ll thrive anywhere with his low center of gravity and shifty lateral quickness, and he’ll soon be on the move. This training camp will be his first link-up with future Real Madrid teammates Vinícius Júnior and Rodrygo, what could be the Spanish giants’ attacking triumvirate for years to come. One thing Pelé never got the chance to do was play in a Champions League final, though Endrick’s a long way from the mountaintop yet. He got a sense of the road ahead from Gabriel once training kicked off, as the domineering Arsenal centerback sent him tumbling with a robust shoulder-to-shoulder challenge. I suppose there are worse things than receiving a Welcome-to-the-Top-Level.
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Even without Endrick, Brazil’s youngsters battered poor New Caledonia 9-0 at the U-17 World Cup this week. More than that, though, they took an astonishing 81 shots in one game. (How were only 23 on target? The poor ball boys.) You’ve got to feel for the New Caledonians, who previously conceded 10 to England on Matchday 1. They’ll be headed home early, it’s fair to say, but at least that home is an island paradise in the South Pacific.
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GET RATCLIFFED!
The first man relieved of duty in the apparent changing-of-the-guard at Manchester United was Richard Arnold, the chief executive who replaced the similarly troubled Ed Woodward in 2022. The latter had vastly improved the club’s commercial operations before taking over as head Glazer subhoncho in 2012, and not a lot has gone right on the football side of things since. Sir Alex Ferguson led them to a Premier League crown the next year—his 13th—but when he departed thereafter, it all seemed to fall apart.
A merry-go-round of managers has ensued as they tried to fill an unfillable hole in their organization, much like Arsenal for a while after Arséne Wenger left. Competitors sprung up all around them with technical directors and football executives with real power, a defined strategy implemented across their organizations, and money to spend. Well, United had that last part, too. For all the talk of Chelsea or Manchester City buying their way to the top, the Red Devils spent £1.5 billion over a decade to buy their way into the Europa League.
It’s an astonishingly poor record at executive level, though the succession of managers-who’d-won-elsewhere—Jose Mourinho, Lous Van Gaal, Ralf Rangnick—deserve their share of the blame for bad signings, bloated wage bills, and imbalanced squads. But why, for instance, was Rangnick hired in November 2021 as an interim manager that the club publicly earmarked to move into a “consultancy role” at the end of the season? By February, his midfielder, Fred, was telling TNT Sports Brazil that it suggested a lack of long-term plan for the squad and was “a little bit bad” for the club. It’s just atrocious performance from the C-suite, hiring a manager and stripping him of authority in the dressing room all in a single stroke.
If this culling is the first sign of Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s newfound influence in Mancunia, it’s a positive one. That’s not to say whoever comes next will get it solved—Patrick Stewart will reportedly take over in the interim—but at least the knight of the realm taking over 25% of Manchester United can see that the faithful want heads to roll. The last 10 years have been unacceptable for a club of this stature. Their home fortress is crumbling, they haven’t competed for the top prizes in years, and they’ve set fire to a bunch of their own money. Luckily, they still bring a lot in. If Ratcliffe can actually get sporting control, he surely can’t spend it any worse than they have been.
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ROMAN REMITTANCE
Speaking of spending, a new investigation from The Guardian and a group of their international partners cites a leaked cache of files to raise fresh questions over payments made during Roman Abramovich’s tenure as Chelsea owner. Tens of millions of pounds were routed through alternative channels to key figures involved in footballing transactions, the story alleges, rather than through the football club. Chelsea were already under investigation for payments alleged to have taken place between 2012 and 2019, but the new transactions date back to 2006. Experts told the paper that some of them could constitute a breach of financial regulations and yield a points deduction.
Could it possibly be that the Blues did not always color between the lines while owned by a Russian oligarch? They certainly spend money in a totally normal way nowadays under an American one. Anyway, according to this report, Eden Hazard might not have been a Chelsea player without one of these novel financial transactions. As his former manager might say, this is football heritage.
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PAPA RAMSDALE
Aaron Ramsdale can’t be happy with how things have shaken out. Mikel Arteta brought in David Raya but initially denied what has since become obvious: that the Spaniard was the new #1. Now Ramsdale is out in the cold, playing the occasional cup game, and his father spoken out: “Aaron’s lost that smile that he showed when he was holding on to that ball," Nick Ramsdale told the Highbury Squad podcast. “It's possibly the way it's been done,” he added, “Not knowing the reason why.”
The general reason why is that the manager thinks Raya is the better keeper, but Ramsdale did nothing particularly wrong to lose his place and hasn’t had the chance to get it back even when Raya’s been shaky. For all the handwringing, though, Arsenal have picked up a lot of points this season and have the joint-best defensive record in the Premier League. Even if Ramsdale deserves more of a chance, what the young Englishman doesn’t need is for his father to become a Little League Dad in public.
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FRIDAY
ITALY vs NORTH MACEDONIA
2:45pm ET on ViX / 7:45pm GMT on Viaplay
It’s PTSD for the Italians, who host the same tiny nation that knocked the mighty Azzuri out of World Cup 2022 before it even started. This time, it’s a trip to EURO 2024 on the line. Once again, the Italian national team has failed to take care of business in qualifying, leaving themselves vulnerable to another catastrophe. And who better to catastrophize than the Macedonians, the nation of just over 2 million people who spoiled the party for 59 million Italians last time?
The Macedonians sat in for 90 minutes in that one before Aleksandar Trajkovski struck in stoppage time to hand the blue shirts their first defeat in 60 home World Cup qualifiers. If Italy fail again here, Ukraine will be on the brink of qualifying, though nothing will be confirmed until the two meet on Monday. More on that one below…
SATURDAY
NETHERLANDS vs IRELAND
2:45pm ET on FOX Sports 2 / 7:45pm GMT on Viaplay
Through a quirk of the revamped (and incredibly complicated) qualifying process for EURO 2024, Ireland stand a better chance of getting to the tournament by losing this game than winning it. If you want the whole background, check out Ed Mackey’s explainer in The Athletic, but the short story is that Ireland want the Netherlands to finish above Greece in Group B. It will be fascinating to watch how Ireland approach a rare—perhaps unprecedented—match where they’d be better off scoring on themselves. Could things get that cynical, or will manager Steven Kenney and his squad view qualification through the alternate Nations League route as a faint possibility and just give this one a go?
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MONDAY
UKRAINE vs ITALY
2:45pm ET on ViX / 7:45pm GMT on Viaplay
If Italy can survive a rendezvous with the Macedonians, they’ll head into the final matchday level on points with Ukraine. All of Group C was swept aside by England, which has left these two scrapping for the second automatic qualifying spot. The Italians won their last meeting in September, but that was at the San Siro. This one will be in Leverkusen, as the Ukrainians have been forced to play their matches abroad—often in Germany—following Russia’s invasion of their homeland.
It’s an opportunity for writing new stories about Ukraine, and this group has got the players to do it. Oleksandr Zinchenko is a revolutionary left back for Arsenal and a string-pulling #10 for his country, while Mykhailo Mudryk is showing signs of life at Chelsea. Vitaliy Mykolenko has been turning in decent performances in defense for Everton, and ex-West Ham man Andriy Yarmolenko is the captain.
Italy have no such national turmoil, though there’s trouble in the national team following the gambling suspension of rising midfield star Sandro Tonali. They also lost a coach, Roberto Mancini, who was poached by Saudi Arabia halfway through qualifying. The 2020 European champions failed to qualify for the last two World Cups, and another absence from a major international tournament would be unthinkable.
TUESDAY
BRAZIL vs ARGENTINA
7:30pm ET on UNIVERSO / Telemundo
For all the reasons above, Brazil is worth a watch at the moment. But a competitive match against the great enemy, Argentina? This World Cup qualifier has genuine stakes after both teams lost this week, even if the gauntlet to get out of South America isn’t quite what it once was with FIFA’s move to expand the tournament to 48 teams. Brazil in particular are now desperate for a result after they were sunk by a Luis Díaz double on Thursday.
You know the story: the world champions, led by Lionel Messi, venture to the Maracanã to battle the latest rhythmically devastating ensemble in canary yellow. Brazil will be without Neymar, who’s out for the season after he tore his ACL against Uruguay during the last international break, so it’s an opportunity for a look at what Brazil might be in 2026. You can expect this one to be both ruthless and refined, always a good recipe for a football match.⚽︎