Liverpool have chance of another trophy as Fifa confirms Qatar tournament
Liverpool will travel to Qatar in December to try to add the Club World Cup to the Champions League title they won against Tottenham Hotspur in Madrid on Saturday.
The ruling council of football’s world governing body Fifa met in Paris yesterday and approved the plan to stage the next two editions of the tournament in the Gulf state.
With Qatar staging the 2022 World Cup in November and December, the seven-team club tournament will be a great chance to test their new stadiums in 2019 and 2020.
After that, Fifa wants to scrap the Club World Cup’s current format and replace it with a 24-team tournament, held ever y fourth summer in the slot currently held by the World Cup warm-up event, the Confederations Cup.
It had been reported in some quarters that Fifa was not going to bother with the Club World Cup before relaunching it in 2021, but that was never the case.
The hold-up in naming a host was caused by having to wait to make sure Qatar would have two finished stadiums for this year’s tournament, as the already renovated Khalifa International Stadium in Doha is being used for the World Athletics Championships in September and will not be ready for football in December.
As per the recent editions of the Club
World Cup, Liverpool will be competing for the title against the champions of world football’s other five confederations and the national champions of the host country.
So far, the other qualifiers are Mexico’s Monterey, Tunisia’s Esp erance and Hieng he ne Sport, the Oceania champions from New Caledonia.
The Asian and South American champions will be decided in November. The current Qatari champions are Al Sadd, whose manager is former Barcelona and Spain star Xavi.
As European champions, Liverpool would enter at the semi-final stage. The Merseyside club lost 1- 0 to South American champion sS a oP au lo in Yokohama in the 2005 final, their only previous appearance in the competition in its current format.
Confirmation that this year’s Club World Cup is to take place means manager J urgen Klopp, pictured, will get the chance to add three more pieces of silverware before the year is out.
They face Premier League winners Manchester City in the Community Shield at Wembley in early August and Europa League winners Chelsea in the European Super Cup in Istanbul on 14 August.
Real Madrid won last year’s Club World Cup in the United Arab Emirates, beating the host nation’s Al Ain in the final. The competition took place from 12-22 December.