CLUB WORLD CUP
Source of Morocco’s growing football influence unveiled!
Morocco’s Atlas Lions late last year became the most successful African country at the FIFA World Cup as the country made history of being the first in the continent to reach the semi-finals.
In the aftermath, they got the biggest prize money ever by an African team. Their prize money was $25 million.
It has been a worthy income for the investment that the country has made in football. Near the kingdom’s capital city, Rabat sat one of the mind-blowing football project sited at Sala Al-Jadida.
It called the Mohammed VI Football Complex. The project, a $6,114,925 (630 million in local currency -dirham) can be easily linked to the growing football success and influence of Morocco in the continent.
The complex is equipped with state-of-the-art infrastructure and facilities, in line with FIFA standards, making it one of the most important in the world.
According to the director of the complex, Hassan Kharbouchi, it was inaugurated by the kingdom’s monarch, His Majesty King Mohammed VI in December 2019.
This complex is a real concentrate of expertise and know-how, built on a 29.3 hectare site, it is intended to host national teams in training camps, as well as foreign national teams wishing to carry out their concentration camps in Morocco.
European club champions, Real Madrid, were due to camp there on Thursday 2 February on arrival for the FIFA Club World Cup going on in Morocco.
Kharbochi revealed that the opening of the sports complex to foreign teams will also enable it to become a lever for the development of national tourism and to promote the international influence of Morocco.
Tucked inside the serene Sala Al-Jadida, the complex houses residences for the Atlas Lions when the fourth -placed side at the 2022 World Cup are camped.
The complex has saved a lot of foreign money that would have been spent in camping the players abroad.
At the disposal of the senior national team at the complex are 66 rooms and four suites.
Other tiers of the Morocco national teams are also taken care of at the complex. For the national U-23 teams are three accommodation blocks with a capacity of 150 beds.
The U17 team has 45 rooms with a capacity of 80 beds. There is another accommodation building that have 54 rooms with a total capacity of 98 beds.
The Mohammed VI complex has four natural grass football pitches, three synthetic grass football pitches, one indoor football pitch, one hybrid football pitch, as well as a reathletisation in-door arena capable of hosting futsal matches.
There is hardly any conceivable project not incorporated in the mind blowing complex as it also have an outdoor Olympic swimming pool, two tennis courts and a beach soccer pitch.
Perhaps the heart of the complex is the medical centre. It is composed of a clinic, a fitness zone and a physiotherapist office.
Also incorporated at the medical centre is a balneotherapy pool. This enable players to bath in minerals and other additives as a therapeutic modality.
A tour of the medical centre saw one entering the ground floor where immediately after the front desk is the exploration zone where the players are supposed to be examined.
The first point at the area is the Cardiology where the heart beats and other related parts of the body are examined. Next is the Emergency area where evaluation and possibly evacuation to hospital are done where necessary.
After that is the massive fitness planning room. On the left hand side is an area meant for goalkeepers where the equipment are supposed to assist in sharpening the reflexes of the goalkeepers.
On the right hand side is the area for the outfield players. Also on the ground floor is the Rehabilitation Pool. It composes of an indoor pool that is encased with glass at one end enabling evaluators to have a clear underwater view by evaluators.
Where anything is noticed, there is a pharmacy department as well as sauna and jacuzzi. Also at the ground floor is ice bath room which Kharbochi said is one of the three existing in sports complexes world wide.
The other two are at Chelsea FC and Bayern Munich in Germany. He explained that the ice bath rooms speed up the recovery rate for players especially in tournament period when they had to play competitive matches within few days.
“While the ordinary ice block is 5°C, the cryoair ice bath room offers -110°C. Thus, the player or patient will only ener for a duration of three minutes.
Some national team players were seen sitting at the waiting room for medical consultants to attend to them.
The medical centre have nutritionists, psychologists and personnel for traumatology.
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
Twelve stadiums have been announced as venues for the expanded Club World Cup holding in the United States next year. There will be 32 clubs in attendance – a far departure from the regular eight.
The tournament kicks off on Sunday, 15 June 2025, with all roads leading to the MetLife Stadium in New York.
The final match will be in New Jersey on Sunday, 13 July 2025, just over a year before the venue stages the FIFA World Cup 26 final.
This venue is joined by 11 more – Mercedes-Benz Stadium (Atlanta), Bank of America Stadium (Charlotte), TQL Stadium (Cincinnati), Rose Bowl Stadium (Los Angeles), Hard Rock Stadium (Miami), GEODIS Park (Nashville), Camping World Stadium (Orlando), Inter&Co Stadium (Orlando), Lincoln Financial Field (Philadelphia), Lumen Field (Seattle), and Audi Field (Washington, D.C.).
“The FIFA Club World Cup 2025 will feature 12 fantastic stadiums where a new chapter in football’s global history will be written by great players from the 32 best clubs in the world,” Infantino, the FIFA president stated.
“This new FIFA competition is the only true example in worldwide club football of real solidarity and inclusivity, allowing the best clubs from Africa, Asia, Central and North America and Oceania to play the powerhouses of Europe and South America in an incredible new World Cup which will impact enormously the growth of club football and talent globally.
“This is about opportunity and hope for those who need it most, and also about prestige and true football for those who make our sport shine.”
With the draw set for December, just two of the 32 teams are yet to be confirmed: one from South America, the other representing the host country.
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.
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