Oct 31, 2022
As preparations for next month's
2022 FIFA World Cup spectacle in Qatar enter their final stages, we
turn our attention back to the pitch for an intriguing look back at
a seminal international "friendly" tournament earnestly designed to
crown a world club soccer champion - and the unwitting
genesis for today's officially-sanctioned FIFA Club World Cup
competition.
Soccer writer and part-time
English lower-division amateur coach Dan Williamson ("When Two Worlds Collide: The
Intercontinental Cup Years") takes us on a journey from
1960 to 2004, when the Intercontinental Cup (later known as the
one-match "Toyota Cup" from 1980-onward) ambitiously sought to
determine the world's best club team by annually
pitting the champions of the two
historically strongest continents - Europe and South America -
against each other in front of an internationally televised
audience.
Although never formally
recognized by the sport's governing body at the time, soccer media
and fans alike reveled in clashes featuring some of the modern
era's most iconic franchises and legendary players - and had no
problem acknowledging each year's victors as the not-so-unofficial
club champions of the world.
We dig into the Cup's
controversial (and sometimes violent) clashes of the late 1960s;
its decline (including numerous team boycotts) during the 70s; a
competition-saving, Japanese-sponsored rebirth in 1980 - and the
eventual absorption and expansion of the series into FIFA's formal
orbit in the 2000s - replete with the retroactive (and ironic)
reclassification of its winners as (now-)"official" world
champions.
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