This is information that may seem anecdotal today, but which we will talk about with much more emphasis in the months to come. Since its elimination against PSG in the Champions League on Tuesday evening, Barça is now certain of not being invited to the next Club World Cup. As a reminder, Fifa will organize in the summer of 2025 in the United States this new competition in the World Cup format (32 teams) which promises to create quite a buzz.
PSG, in its current capacity as the fourth European club in the UEFA index, has been among the clubs invited for a long time and will be able to benefit from the visibility and enormous economic benefits that this new World Cup promises. Barça, on the other hand, will watch all this from behind their television set. The explanation is simple: to select the 12 European clubs invited to the competition, Fifa chose to rely on the UEFA index, that is to say the ranking of the teams according to their results in the European Cup on the last five seasons. With two small additional rules: two clubs maximum per country but automatic qualification in the event of final victory in the Champions League.
To summarize, by losing yesterday against PSG, Barça therefore lost its last chances of moving up to the UEFA index ahead of Real and Atletico de Madrid, the two future representatives of Spain at this Club World Cup, and to secure an automatic place with a victory in the Champions League this year.
As the list of participants will be decided on the basis of the rankings at the end of this season, we now know 11 of the 12 European participants in the Club World Cup in the summer of 2025: Chelsea and Manchester City for England, the Real and Atletico Madrid for Spain, Bayern and Dormund for Germany, Inter and Juventus for Italy, Porto and Benfica for Portugal, PSG for France. There remains one place to be allocated between the Austrians of Salzburg, the highest ranked club in the UEFA index among the countries which do not already have their two representatives, or Arsenal in the event of a final victory in the Champions League.