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Kyle Bonn
The 2025 Club World Cup in the United States is shaping up not only to be a warmup for the FIFA World Cup a year later, but also one of the most highly anticipated football events of the current four-year cycle.
FIFA has reshuffled the annual club event in an attempt to make it more visible, more competitive, and more coveted.
Instead of a nearly-forgotten seven-team tournament shoved in the middle of the club season, the tournament will now be held once every four years and feature a whopping 32 clubs competing for a trophy with much higher stakes.
The process for selecting the clubs has come under some discussion as FIFA goes about choosing which 32 clubs from around the world will participate.
The Sporting News explains how clubs are selected, particularly those from the host nation USA and its domestic league MLS.
MORE: How to watch the 2025 Club World Cup draw
The 32 teams in the 2025 Club World Cup hail from all around the world, making the competition a truly global tournament.
The confederation with the most clubs is, as expected, UEFA, who feature 12 teams in the 2025 tournament. They bring some of the world’s most prominent and renowned clubs, such as Man City, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, and PSG among many others.
Meanwhile, CONMEBOL bring six clubs, while CAF, AFC, and CONCACAF all get four competitive berths each and OFC gets one. Finally, the host nation gets one nominee to round out the field.
Most confederations nominated the winner of their continental competition each of the previous four years as their main representatives at the Club World Cup. The tricky part is rounding out the field when the same club wins the continental competition in multiple years.
For example, Al Ahly won three of the four CAF Champions League titles in the current four-year cycle, meaning two African clubs were nominated to participate based on the confederation’s ranking system.
Inter Miami were awarded the host nation nomination for the final participant slot at the 2025 Club World Cup.
CONCACAF’s official competitive explanation was that Inter Miami were this year’s Supporters’ Shield winners as regular season champions, and thus deserving of the host nation slot.
However, the presence of Lionel Messi at the tournament is largely considered the thinly-veiled reason for their participation over any other club.
This is made obvious by how much FIFA are leaning into Miami in this competition, with the draw taking place in the city and Inter Miami already confirmed to be one of the participants in the opening game of the tournament.
With the 2024 MLS Cup final set for Saturday, the host nation participant would not yet be determined by the time of the draw had they decided to give this year’s league winner the spot.
Thus, FIFA took the easy choice of nominating Inter Miami instead.
Kyle Bonn, is a Syracuse University broadcast journalism graduate with over a decade of experience covering soccer globally. Kyle specializes in soccer tactics and betting, with a degree in data analytics. Kyle also does TV broadcasts for Wake Forest soccer, and has had previous stops with NBC Soccer and IMG College. When not covering the game, he has long enjoyed loyalty to the New York Giants, Yankees, and Fulham. Kyle enjoys playing racquetball and video games when not watching or covering sports.
