The Club World Cup Happened. The European Press Already Forgot.

Two months after the final, the press has moved on. The summer's expanded Club World Cup is being treated as if it did not happen, which is itself the most interesting thing about how the tournament was received.

Thirty-two clubs across thirteen countries. A month of football in the United States. Al-Hilal beating Manchester City in the round of sixteen. Real Madrid eliminated by PSG in the semi-finals. The football was, by any reasonable measure, varied, competitive, and substantive.

The European press treated the entire month as an inconvenience. The coverage was thin, frequently dismissive, occasionally hostile. The framing that took hold within forty-eight hours was that the tournament was a money grab, the clubs were exhausted, the players were unhappy, the audience was insufficient. All of these framings contained partial truths and added up to a misreading of what actually happened.

What actually happened is that football outside Europe got the chance to play football inside Europe's seasonal window, in front of cameras Europe's press was forced to point at it, with results that the Europe-centric power structure could not fully suppress. Al-Hilal beating Manchester City was a structural event. The press treated it as anomaly.

The expanded Club World Cup will run every four years from now on. The next edition is in 2029. Between now and then, the European press will continue to treat this tournament as illegitimate, in part because the structure of the European football industry depends on the Champions League being the only true global club competition. The Club World Cup threatens that arrangement.

Whether it succeeds in restructuring global club football depends on what happens at the next two editions. Whether the press accurately reports what happens depends on whether the press's relationship to the Champions League changes, which it will not.

I wrote a year and a half ago that there was a case to be made for the Club World Cup that nobody outside Europe was making. The case was made by the tournament itself, in the football it produced. The press did not hear it. The football has already moved on. The reframe will have to happen elsewhere.