FIFA’s new, retooled Club World Cup got underway in the United States of America this weekend as 32 clubs from all four corners of the globe lock horns to see which club side will be crowned the planet’s best.
This new, expanded format which has seen the tournament go from a seven-team, seven-match contest into a 32-side, 63-match behemoth, has drawn its fair share of criticism amid fears of player burnout, ahead of the 2025/26 season which will culminate in the World Cup.
And after some lopsided results in the opening weekend, questions are also being asked about the competitive balance of the tournament.
Auckland City goalkeeper makes Club World Cup admission
Auckland City are the sole representatives from the Oceania Football Confederation, one of the six continental confederations in international football and is mainly made up of island nations with limited football infrastructure. Australia had been their biggest member, but left to join the Asian Football Confederation in 2006.
That means New Zealand is now the biggest nation within the OFC, but their two professional teams, Wellington Phoenix and Auckland FC, play in the Australian A-League, which has meant semi-pro Auckland City have qualified for the Club World Cup due to their record in the OFC Champions League over the past four years.
And this is how a team of semi-pro part-timers, ranked as the 4,948th-best side in the world according to Opta, found themselves up against a full-strength Bayern Munich side (ranked 4,942 places higher) in Cincinnati on Sunday afternoon. A 10-0 thrashing duly followed, with City’s goalkeeper Conor Tracey explaining the sacrifices he and his team-mates have had to make in order to travel to the USA.
Tracey’s day job is in a veterinary supply wholesaler warehouse in New Zealand and he simply does not have enough annual leave to cover his team’s trips abroad.
“I never quite have enough to cover it,” he said before the squad flew out. “So I’ve always got to do a combination of annual leave and leave without pay.
“I'll be suffering a bit – especially with this one – with the rent and bills and stuff like that, but to play against Bayern and Benfica and Boca – 100% it's worth it.”
Further underlining the mismatch, Auckland’s amateur players have a salary cap of 150 New Zealand dollars a week, which works out at about £66. It would therefore take their best players almost 117 years to bank Kane’s weekly salary of £400,000.
It won’t get too much easier for the minnows, who face Benfica on Friday before closing out their group stage fixtures against Boca Juniors the following Tuesday. Assuming they don’t qualify for the knockout phase, they will then return to domestic action with a trip to Tauranga City FC at their 1,000-capacity Links Avenue Reserve stadium, which also hosts the Mount Maunganui Dog Training Club.
