The 2025 FIFA Club World Cup final will be held at the New Jersey home of the NFL’s New York Giants and New York Jets, world soccer’s governing body announced on Saturday along with the venue lineup for the revamped tournament.

The expanded 32-team tournament, which will feature leading clubs from around the world, will be held in 12 stadiums around the United States next year from June 15-July 13.

The open-air stadium for the final, which opened in 2010 and has a capacity of 82,500, held the Copa America Centenario final in 2016 when Chile denied Lionel Messi’s Argentina for a second time in a penalty shootout.

The venue was also announced earlier this year as the site of the 2026 World Cup final.

The other venues, mostly a mix of NFL and Major League Soccer stadiums, are in Atlanta, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, Philadelphia, Seattle, Washington and two in Orlando.

The Club World Cup will have eight groups of four with the top two teams from each group advancing to the single-match knockout stage from the round of 16 to the final.

FIFPRO’s European member unions have started legal action against FIFA over the Club World Cup due to concerns over the impact of a crammed calendar on players’ health and performance.

-Reuters

The expanded FIFA Club World Cup which has put the organisation of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations in disarray, is beginning to crumble.

Cup holders, Real Madrid, have indicated their intention not to participate.

Earlier on, the umbrella body of professional footballers has also frowned at the fixtures congestion which the novel competition appears to have caused.

According to Reuters’ report, Real Madrid will decline FIFA’s invitation to participate in the Club World Cup as the governing body have undervalued the compensation the 15-times Champions League winners should receive, manager Carlo Ancelotti said.

FIFA’s revamped international tournament, with 32 teams, is set to take place in the United States at the end of next season, with Europe’s best-ranked 12 clubs among those invited.

Ancelotti, one of the most successful football managers in Europe, has won the Club World Cup three times and the Champions League five times.

“FIFA can forget it, footballers and clubs will not participate in that tournament,” Ancelotti told Italian daily Il Giornale in an interview published on Monday to coincide with his 65th birthday.

“A single Real Madrid match is worth 20 million and FIFA wants to give us that amount for the whole cup. Negative. Like us, other clubs will refuse the invitation.”

Ancelotti, who led Real to a Champions League and LaLiga double last season, said there had been a lot of pressure on managers lately but he had managed to stay passionate about his job.

“I see nothing particularly new, this has always been our job but the case of (former Liverpool manager Juergen) Klopp is significant. The pressure continues, the burden of responsibility becomes too heavy, obsession takes over,” he said.

“I keep my passion, that’s how I live the match, the game, my job; I’ve always carried this balance with me. I’ve overcome moments that weren’t always positive; after my experience with Everton I was off the radar, they thought I was finished, I was old.”

With all three European club competitions expanded to 36 teams from next season, the Club World Cup has come under scrutiny for saturating the football calendar.

In May, FIFA said they would not consider rescheduling their 32-team Club World Cup after global players’ union FIFPRO and the World Leagues Association (WLA) threatened legal action if they did not review their plans.

World football governing body Fifa has rejected claims that Fifpro and the World Leagues Association were not consulted over plans to host a 32-team Club World Cup.

It comes after players’ union Fifpro and the WLA called on Fifa to reschedule the tournament, due to take place next summer, amid a threat of legal action.

Fifpro and the WLA said “players are being pushed beyond their limits”.

In a letter sent to Fifpro and the WLA, which has been seen by BBC Sport, Fifa says it has “a duty and responsibility” to implement an international match calendar in the “best interests of world football”.

Fifa insisted Fifpro and the WLA were consulted about changes to the overall 2025-30 international match calendar, including the 2025 Club World Cup, which was confirmed by the Fifa Council in December 2022.

Although it says it is open to talks, Fifa has no intention of altering next year’s Club World Cup, saying it is “fully within our rights to set the parameters of our competitions whilst respecting the regulatory framework in place”.

Manchester City and Chelsea are among the 12 European representatives at the expanded Club World Cup, to be held in the USA between 13 June and 15 July 2025.

Fifa point out that domestic member leagues of the WLA, such as the Premier League, can arrange their own competitions, noting the organisation of “international tours” in recent years.

Last summer, the Premier League hosted a six-team summer series in the USA, involving Chelsea, Newcastle, Brighton, Fulham, Aston Villa and Brentford.

Fifa also asked if Fifpro and the WLA had been in touch with other bodies, given their games “are responsible for a fractional amount of the total elite club games around the world”.

“While we disagree with the tenor and content of your letter, we have nonetheless taken note of your concerns and are more than happy to invite you to discuss the matter further at a time convenient to you,” Fifa added.

-BBC