The last FIFA Club World Cup before the new format is implemented.

By Eduardo Benitez

The 2023 FIFA Club World Cup will be taking place in Saudi Arabia starting on Dec. 12. The seven teams will be competing, six of them being continental champions and the host nations representative. It will be the last iteration of the Club World Cup before the new format makes the tournament every 4 years.

This tournament will consist of seven participants, all matches for have been announced by FIFA. The first round will be a match between host Al-Ittihad who won the Saudi Professional League last year and the representative from the Oceania Football Federation, Auckland City (New Zealand).

Second Round of matches will have Al Ahly (Egypt), who is representing the Confederation of African Football, get a bye round and awaits the winner of round one. The other side of the bracket will have the Asian Football Confederation representative Urawa Red Diamonds (Japan) face off against the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football representative Leon (Mexico).

As it has been standard for this tournament, the Union of European Football Association and South American Football Confederation representatives get automatic bye into the semi finals of the tournament. This year, Manchester City (England) and Fluminese (Brazi) are both making their debut as they won their continental trophies for the first time.

The Club World Cup has only been won by teams from Europe and Brazil. The current holder of the Club World Cup Champion is Real Madrid. Many representatives from South America have made it to finals on many occasions but only the Brazilian representative have won the tournament.
This will be the last short tournament format for this competition as the next Club World Cup is set to take place in 2025. The tournament will be expanded to a 32 team format. Following these changes the tournament from then on will also only take place once every four years.