Late on Thursday evening, Abu Dhabi time, Al Ain will discover where and against whom they start what could be the greatest adventure in the club’s history.
Matching the standards they set in seizing the last Asian Champions League may have proved difficult over the last few months, but Al Ain are about to be reminded of the major bonus that historic triumph earned them.
That’s their place at the most globally-inclusive elite club tournament ever staged, the 32-team Club World Cup in the USA next summer, the draw for which takes place in Miami (10pm UAE).
Al Ain will be one of the later names drawn from the pot, but manager Leonardo Jardim will have seven months to plot a route through a group whose top two finishers will go to the knockout phase.
The 2025 Club World Cup, with its 63 games, is an entirely different beast from the more slimline, all-knockout version of an event that, in the last two decades, whizzed in and out of the UAE five times, thrillingly so when in 2018 Al Ain made the final against Real Madrid.
In the new, month-long expanded format, it will take seven games to get that far. There will be five clubs from the Mena region dreaming of a long run: Al Ain; Al Hilal of Riyadh; and, by dint of their successes in the African Champions League over the past four years, Cairo’s Al Ahly, Esperance of Tunis and Wydad Casablanca, WAC.
The seedings, released by Fifa this week after Brazil’s Botafogo filled the last available slot by winning the Copa Libertadores – the South American equivalent of the Champions League – have Al Ain in Pot 4, among the lowest ranked contenders.
That means they will not share a group with Esperance, nor with Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami, who have been granted entry via the host nation’s invitation slot.
Nor will they be able to target soft points against the weakest of the 32 teams, the semi-professionals of New Zealand’s Auckland City, whom Al Ain defeated 6-2 in September in the opening round of the 2024 version of the competition, the last of the small-scale Club World Cups, now rebranded as the Intercontinental Cup.
The calibre of teams in Pot 3 is varied enough for Jardim to hope Al Ain have the beating of some of them, although, given Al Ahly’s 3-0 victory over the Asian champions in the Intercontinental Cup in October, he might be pleased to avoid the Egyptian giants.
Botafogo – who won the Copa Libertadores for the first time on Saturday, beating Atletico Mineiro in the final despite having midfielder Gregore sent off in the opening minute – are also among the third seeds, along with Mexican clubs Leon and Monterrey and Argentina’s Boca Juniors, whose squad includes a number of worldly veterans, such as Edinson Cavani, Marcos Rojo and goalkeeper Sergio Romero.
All 12 European qualifiers are distributed between Pots 1 and 2. Four of the eight groups will have two European clubs in them, although there is a mechanism in the draw to ensure no club from the same country will be grouped together.
So if Al Ain were to draw Manchester City from Pot 1 – a fixture sure to generate great interest in Abu Dhabi, given the ownership links to the Premier League champions – they would not face Chelsea in the first phase; if they draw Bayern Munich, they will not also meet Borussia Dortmund.
Also among the Pot 1 teams are River Plate, whom Al Ain beat in the 2018 semi-final, and Real Madrid, along with Bayern, Paris Saint-Germain, Palmeiras and Flamengo. The other Pot 1 Brazilian club, Fluminense, would appear on a current form – they sit a lowly 16th in Brazil’s Serie A – by far the most frail.
From a Pot 2 that includes Inter Milan, the Italian champions, Chelsea, Juventus, Dortmund, Atletico Madrid, Porto and Benfica, RB Salzburg might look the most beatable. The Austrians have lost four of their five Uefa Champions League games this season.
But much can change in the next six months. With the elite European clubs all anxious about the fatigue they will be carrying from long seasons – Real Madrid could have played 65 club games by mid-June – it’s a tournament genuinely open to a strong run from a supposed outsider.
For Jardim, one of many critics of the previous format and the way it was structured to give byes into the semi-final for the respective champions of Europe and South America, the new format is a welcome reform.
“There should be better care with the match schedule,” Jardim complained when he was in charge of Al Hilal at the 2021-22 Club World Cup. “I’d warn Fifa that it’s unfair when some teams have to play four matches in eight days and others, better teams, only have to play two and are better rested.
“Teams from Asia [and by implication Africa and North and Central America] should be able to have the ambition to win this Cup.”
His warning has been heard. By the end of proceedings on Thursday, his Al Ain will see how high they must set their ambitions if they are to make their summer trip to America last for more than three games.
