The 2025 FIFA Club World Cup hype is starting to build, but Liverpool fans won't get to see their club compete in this revamped international tournament.
FIFA has reinvented the Club World Cup with the new format debuting in the summer of 2025. Thirty-two teams from across the world will compete in a two-stage tournament consisting of eight groups of four and a four round knockout bracket.
Teams like Manchester City, Real Madrid, Chelsea, Juventus, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain and more will battle it out in the financially lucrative tournament. Though, one Premier League giant won't be in attendance: Liverpool.
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Why Liverpool Isn't Playing in the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup
FIFA instituted a two-team-per-nation rule for the new Club World Cup, meaning just Chelsea and Manchester City will represent England and the Premier League next summer.
How did those two teams qualify over Liverpool? The European clubs qualified based on their performances in the Champions League across the past four seasons. Winners of the tournament automatically qualified, so Chelsea and Manchester City earned their spots by lifting the trophy since the turn of the decade.
If Liverpool had beaten Real Madrid the second time around in the 2021–22 campaign, the Reds would be in the tournament over Chelsea since Manchester City's win was more recent. Instead, Real Madrid qualifies by winning two Champions Leagues this decade and Atletico Madrid ends up earning the other spot through its UEFA ranking.
Only one team did not qualify through winning a continental competition or through ranking: Inter Miami. Lionel Messi's MLS team qualified for the tournament as the host nation's (USA) representative. The Columbus Crew—the reigning MLS champions at the time—was passed over.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Why Liverpool Isn't Playing in the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup.
