Manchester United head out to America this summer on their pre-season tour and the Reds could still return to the States in the expanded 2025 Club World Cup.
The Reds will return to the Champions League next season under Erik Ten Hag after securing a third place finish in the Premier League. And it means there’s two viable routes into the newly expanded Club World Cup which has its first edition in 2025.
Currently, the Club World Cup is a seven-team tournament that sees the Champions League winners from each confederation, plus the host nation's league champions, compete for the trophy. However, the 2023 edition in Saudi Arabia will be the last under this format.
From 2025, 32 teams will enter the tournament. The USA has been confirmed as the host and will provide one representative. CONMEBOL will provide six teams, CONCACAF, CAF and AFC four each while OFC will have one representative. The remaining 12 clubs will come from Europe.
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That will include the three most recent winners of the Champions League plus next season’s victors. That means Manchester City, Chelsea and Real Madrid have all punched their ticket for the States. United would join them should they lift the trophy next June. That might seem far-fetched but there remains another route in for the Reds.
The remaining eight European slots will be made up by a UEFA four-year ranking system. That formula hasn’t yet been laid out but using the club coefficients, used to determine seedings in UEFA competitions we can gain a clear picture of the running order.
If we take the past four seasons, United would be seventh and would comfortably qualify given three of the six teams ahead of them are the already qualified City, Chelsea and Real. However, the expanded Club World Cup has a cap of two clubs per country, aside from an exception in cases where more than two clubs from the same country win the confederation’s premier club competition (the Champions League) over the four-year period.
So should City retain the Champions League it would open up another spot for an English representative. The wording also appears to suggest that if Arsenal or Newcastle United - the other two Premier League representatives in the 2024-25 elite European competition - were to win the competition then another top-flight club could secure a spot via the rankings list.
Even then the Reds face another obstacle with Liverpool currently ahead of them in the coefficient table and potentially poised to be first in line. But Jurgen Klopp’s side are not in the Champions League this season so there is scope for United to overhaul the Merseysiders and claim a spot in America.
Until the guidelines are clearly set out it remains ifs, buts and maybes but United could still be playing in the competition come 2025.
