Palancas, i.e. in the plural, was the word of the summer for Barcelona fans. For Madrid it’s a sextet, an ambition of the club because it’s a record they lack and they live worried about it. The sextet combines the league, the cup, the Champions League, the two Supercups and the world championship, all in series. Barça did it with Guardiola and Bayern with Flick; Madrid aspire and feel capable of doing so, despite the general reticence of their club when it comes to title guarantees, including in the voice of their coach Ancelotti. It remains to be discussed what the starting point is: whether it is about winning all six in the same season, as was the case in those cases, or whether it is worth combining titles from two different seasons with what Madrid already have would have prepared. Do the Super Cups correspond to the season in which the title that gave them access was achieved, or to the following ones, in the first dates of which they will be played with squads already renewed?
But that wasn’t my goal, but the state of limbo in which one of the chain’s six competitions lives, the Club World Cup, colloquially known as the Small World Cup, which doesn’t yet know when and where it will be played. And not even the formula, because FIFA meanwhile wanted to expand it to 24 teams, which will be impossible.
The huge World Cup and the biannual World Cup were Infantino’s two projects so that his FIFA could raise more and with more money and more power, Ceferin could eclipse UEFA. Today FIFA’s only main source of income is the World Cup every four years. UEFA, in addition to the European Championship every four years, the Champions League every year. Nothing to see. Hence Infantino’s plans, which have so far remained unsuccessful. He promoted the Super League conspiracy to torpedo the Champions League, and when they reached an impasse he turned his profile; he conceived his biannual World Cup by coaxing the smaller confederations, with which he nearly drove UEFA and Conmebol into a schism the seeds of which still exist; and he conceived a Club Super World Cup (the current one isn’t making him any money) at 24, in which 12 Europeans, 4-6 South Americans and the rest would have room to distribute. There would be 8 groups of 3 teams each, the winners of which would then cross until there were two finalists. The distribution by confederations and merits for participation (rankings? classification in continental tournaments?) were debated when the pandemic hit and that remained in limbo.
Today, FIFA signed a first 24-team World Cup with China for February 2023. But at this point there is not the slightest movement to fix the 24-team voting system and it is doubtful China will simply concede the switch to a mundialito 7, of minimal interest. You already know: the champions of the six confederations come to him (one more than continents, because America has two, Conmebol and Concacaf) plus the host, who passes a preliminary round. The European and South American champions are now moving into the semi-finals. Few games and of very little interest, except for the final, almost always between the European and the South American.
This very common European-South American final refers to the origin of everything as it was born in 1960 as the Intercontinental Cup and faced the champions of the European Cup and Copa Libertadores with Real Madrid’s victory over Peñarol. Even then we were considered the winners and world champions, although there was no such official title because FIFA didn’t allow it. It started with a doubles final, back and forth, but the South Americans came to bat so hard that in one year it was not celebrated and in another in Europe the runners-up (Atletico who won it) participated because of the champion’s resignation. That was saved by Japan and Toyota by organizing it as a single party for many years. That kept the flame alive until FIFA decided to absorb it by allowing access to other continents.
But this year he suffocated. Victims of ambition, confusion, pandemic and the Qatar World Cup stuck like a elephant in the middle of the season, we don’t know what will become of the hapless little World Cup. The forecast is a model at 7 in February in any petromonarchy taking over the removal. But today, with the championships already underway, there is no where, when or how. And there’s no shortage of people who think it’s not done, then the sextet’s discussions would be useless.
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