During the FIFA Club World Cup 2025, heads of football federations around the world will participate in different stages. Only Aleksander Ceferin - UEFA President, FIFA Vice President absolutely did not appear.
After the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup is held, many UEFA officials are concerned that this tournament will affect European clubs and the tournament system of the old continent in terms of expertise. Not only that, they are also worried that one day, FIFA will continue to open other tournaments that affect the UEFA Champions League, the most prestigious tournament on the planet.
Last Saturday, FIFA President Gianni Infantino said he did not rule out the possibility of adding teams in the next Club World Cup. From there, there may be more European teams participating. Infantino has not yet decided which frequency will it host the FIFA Club World Cup: every 4 years or just every 2 years?
The head of FIFA has made it clear that he wants big names in Europe such as Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur, Barcelona, Milan and Napoli to participate. These are all teams that did not appear in this tournament, thereby causing the effect to be reduced more or less than expected.
The FIFA Club World Cup 2025 has brought in 2.1 billion USD in revenue from television rights, sponsorship, ticket sales and other revenues.
"With 63 games, the average basic revenue per game is $33 million. Currently, there is no club-level tournament in the world that can compare. The 2025 Club World Cup is the most successful club tournament in all aspects" - Infantino affirmed.
According to data published by FIFA, the 2025 Club World Cup champion could receive up to 125 million USD. However, this figure is still down from the $154 million UEFA announced that Real Madrid earned when winning the Champions League in 2024. To refute, FIFA argue that the Club World Cup is more valuable for each match (as the champions are only allowed to play a maximum of seven matches in a month of the tournament, while the Champions League takes place throughout the season).
The FIFA Club World Cup 2025 semi-finals have 3 European teams participating, but Ceferin still does not appear in the stands. According to the UEFA representative, at that time, EURO for women was taking place, so the president's focus had to be on this tournament.
Despite UEFA's explanation, if you look at it more carefully, Ceferin only appeared in the stands in 1/22 of the first matches at EURO Women 2025. The FIFA Club World Cup 2025 will start from June 13, while the women's EURO will not open until February 2. UEFA has refused to explain after reading this data.
Previously, Aleksander Ceferin also did not participate in the 2023 Women's World Cup final, a match featuring two European countries, England and Spain.
Despite being absent from most important FIFA events, Ceferin's salary at this organization is still enough and it is not small. As President of the European Union and Vice President of the FIFA Council, Ceferin is eligible to receive an annual net salary from FIFA of $300,000. In May, when asked about this amount for Ceferin, neither UEFA nor FIFA commented on whether the UEFA head would receive enough of this.
On UEFA's X account, there is no mention of the FIFA Club World Cup even though this tournament has many European teams participating. The final match is even a competition between two European teams. On the contrary, CONMEBOL's X account often posts about South American players and teams competing excellently at the FIFA Club World Cup 2025.
Not only in the Club World Cup event, the tension between UEFA and FIFA was also demonstrated through an event in Paraguay in May. UEFA members of the FIFA Council held an admission meeting at the FIFA Convention. The meeting came after Gianni Infantino arrived three hours late.
After that, after the lunch break, 8 UEFA members of the FIFA Council and some European delegates did not return to the meeting. The reason Infantino arrived late was because he had previously prioritized a meeting with President Trump on Thursday in Qatar.
