FIFA CLUB WORLD CUP CELTIC COULD BE THERE NEXT TIME, HERE’S HOW
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- Jun 17
- 4 min read
We’ve still got another couple of weeks until Celtic play their first pre-season friendly.
However, for football addicts like us, there is the dubious distraction of FIFA’s latest cynical cash cow, the Club World Cup.
FIFA Club World Cup: Celtic Have a Pathway to Qualification and it’s Easier than You Might Think
I’ll start off by saying I’ve watched a couple of games so far, and whilst this tournament is being held at the wrong time (even the best footballers still need an end of season rest), and for entirely the wrong reasons (primarily greed and sports-washing), this new event has still caught my interest.
Perhaps its because I’m one of those people who loves watching obscure teams and players we don’t normally get to see in the heavily curated version of, almost entirely European, football that TV companies give us.
I grew up watching shows like Channel 4’s Transworld Sport, and ITV’s Futbol Mundial, where I enjoyed occasional glimpses of South American, Asian and African football which, otherwise, would never show up on regular TV in Scotland.
Anyway, despite its many and obvious shortcomings, The Club World Cup is a rare opportunity for some of these lesser footballing continental powers like Asia and Oceania to challenge the top UEFA club sides directly.
Now, how does any of this FIFA Club World Cup stuff relate to Celtic?
Well bear with me, I’ll get to that shortly.
Depending on how this month’s tournament pans out, the next FIFA Club World Cup in 2029 could be expanded to 48 teams. More teams obviously mean more chances for teams, including Celtic, to qualify. However, even under the current 32-team set up, Celtic aren’t actually that far away from being able to make the cut.
At the moment UEFA has 12 of the 32 places assigned to them.
The first 4 go to the winners of the previous 4 UEFA Champions League title, up to the 2023-24 season. The next 8 are determined based on performance in the Champions League over the previous 4 seasons.
There’s a couple of caveats to this however.
Firstly, let’s just say for example if Paris Saint Germain built on this year’s success and went on to win the next 3 Champions Leagues in a row. In that case, 1 place would be assigned to Champions League winners (just getting to the final doesn’t count).
It would then be the 11 best placed UEFA Champions League Teams over the 4-year period who would get an invite.
But wait, there’s another caveat that potentially benefits Celtic.
Unlike the Champions League, Europe’s big five leagues of England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France, haven’t yet managed to get FIFA to bow to their whims and let loads of teams from those countries into the tournament at the expense of other, actual national champions.
As it stands, only 2 teams from each UEFA country can enter the Club World Cup. This famously worked against Liverpool this season. Despite the fact they comfortably made it into the top 8 performing teams over the last 4 UCL seasons, the fact is Manchester City and Chelsea both qualified as Champions League winners during the same timespan.
So, Liverpool were bumped out and Austrian side RB Salzburg took their place. This is also why Barcelona aren’t featured. Both Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid outperformed the Catalan giants over the past 4 seasons.
RB Salzburg are there because, basically, they are from a country that doesn’t traditionally have more than one team progress in the Champions League.
Indeed, their performance over the 4-year period is better than Celtic’s but not by that much.
Salzburg made the group stages 4 times and advanced to the last 16 once.
Could Celtic match that level of performance over the next 3 years, and build on our top 24 placement this year?
It’s definitely possible. The stranglehold the top 5 UEFA nations have on the Champions League actually works to their detriment in terms of the Club World Cup, so long as FIFA hold firm and stick to the only 2 clubs from each UEFA nation rule.
Of the 36 teams that will contest next season’s Champions League, at least 22 of them (almost two thirds of the entire entrant list) are from the top 5 countries.
This could rise to 23 if Nice, who finished 4th in France’s Ligue 1 last season, make it through their two qualifying ties.
Suddenly, Celtic aren’t that far away.
If we could make the top 16 maybe 2 out the next 3 seasons, and ensure that we qualify for at least the group stages in the other season, then that may well be enough to get us to the next Club World Cup in 2029.
It’s a tall order, to be sure, but its definitely not beyond us, if we can show a similar incremental improvement next season as we did last season compared to 2023.
We can debate another day as to whether the Club World Cup should even exist. In the meantime, just remember, it’s not impossible that Celtic might be there next time.
