I struggle to find how the revamped Club World Cup will have much appeal. They are basically disregarding the many decades’ history of the Intercontinental Cup/ yearly CWC format for a new 4 year tournament that is more associated with national teams.

The only possible alternative left is the joint-Southeast Asian bid then. It’ll almost certainly go to Saudi Arabia now.

Can Botafogo not screw this up?

The stands look miles away from the pitch, though I understand not all stadiums are football only.

It’s owned by the municipality. SC Braga is the principal tenant of the stadium and pays a token monthly rent of €500.

They will probably get their act together eventually and finish in mid table

Club competitions are also split into zones, not a big fan of this but I guess the sheer geographic size of AFC and clubs having less resources makes it impractical to have a truly continent wide competition until the later stages.

I’ve always liked how clean the CONMEBOL World Cup qualification is, just all 10 teams in a round robin league table format with 18 games. In contrast AFC is so huge there are so many rounds of qualifying to go through.