Actual Madrid will fly to Qatar for one match in December as they contest the ultimate of the brand new FIFA Intercontinental Cup, with the format of the competitors now confirmed.
FIFA has remodeled the Membership World Cup right into a quadrennial event extra in step with the unique nationwide groups World Cup. The primary 32-team version, which is able to mirror World Cup tournaments performed between 1998 and 2022, will happen in June and July subsequent summer time.
However fairly than scrap the competitors that has been performed each December since 2005, FIFA has retained it beneath a barely completely different guise that can nonetheless see every season’s UEFA Champions League winners compete towards different continental champions from world wide.
As final season’s European champions, Madrid will participate within the first such FIFA Intercontinental Cup. It borrows the title of the defunct competitors that was contested between the European Cup winners and the Copa Libertadores winners every year from 1960 till 2004.
The early rounds can be contested by golf equipment from elsewhere and the competitors can be unfold over a number of months fairly than a number of days. And fairly than be primarily based in a single host metropolis or nation, the upper ranked membership may have dwelling benefit within the first two rounds.
It signifies that the opening tie between Al Ain and Auckland Metropolis, the champions of Asia and Oceania respectively, can be performed in Abu Dhabi on Sunday night. The winner of that encounter will then progress to the following spherical in on 29 October to face African champions Al Ahly in Egypt. That recreation has been given the extra title of the African-Asian-Pacific Cup.
The primary recreation in Qatar can be on 11 December and pits the South American champions towards the North and Central American champions. It has been dubbed the Derby of the Americas and can see Mexico’s Pachuca and the as but unknown 2024 Copa Libertadores winners face one another.
Then, the winner of that spherical goes on to face both Al Ain, Auckland Metropolis or Al Ahly three days in a while 14 December within the Challenger Cup. Lastly, Madrid enter the fray on 17 December for the Intercontinental Cup itself, to go face to face with the ‘challenger’ for the general trophy.
It’s in the end just one further recreation for Madrid, nevertheless it nonetheless entails a prolonged worldwide return journey and the anticipated postponement or rearrangement of a La Liga fixture towards Rayo Vallecano. And, given the growth of the Champions League and summer time Membership World Cup, the calls for on the squad may see them play as much as 71 membership video games throughout seven competitions this season.
