Planet football in the extreme

Somehow it seems exceedingly appropriate that this tournament should have had its origins in a hotel in Las Vegas: there is something about this event that smacks of dice throwing.

The clumsily-titled Club World Championship is FIFA's latest big gamble. It is an idea conceived in the Nevada desert six years ago, yet surely that length of time was long enough for those involved to question such political risk taking. After all, FIFA are still the world governing body.

As such they remain more powerful than UEFA, even if the gap has narrowed since UEFA expanded the European Champions' League and thereby guaranteed the big clubs big money on a consistent basis.

But listen to FIFA officials and they will tell you that their ideals are more lofty than simply planting a similar cash crop to UEFA's; no, this is all about the global game, about reaching those parts of planet football unaccustomed to being refreshed by a lorry-load of money or a dash of television glamour.

Think the Middle East, think Australia, think Tahiti. Before returning home to Switzerland yesterday after the death of his mother, Sepp Blatter, the FIFA president, once again tried to throw some flattering light on the tournament, and he had a word of criticism for those in Europe sneering from afar.

Commenting on Al-Nassr of Saudi Arabia meeting Raja Casablanca of Morocco in Sao Paulo on Friday night, Blatter said: "what is so dramatic about people in Europe not being interested in this match? The important thing here is that the game is of interest to fans in Asia and Africa."

One could almost sympathise if a financial agenda was not so obviously part of the equation. The head of the organising committee, a Saudi Arabian called Abdullah AlDabal, offered a little more context than Blatter when he said: "Each and every FIFA tournament has started as a trial competition. FIFA do not want to deprive developing confederations like Asia, Oceania and Africa of the chance to improve."

As it happens, Tahiti's federation were one of nine applicants to stage this virgin bash, but not even FIFA's evangelising could countenance that prospect and so the game returned to its soul, albeit one in a decaying Maracana, to the land where football is beautiful with a capital B.

Brazil must be desperate, or put upon, because to walk around the Maracana yesterday lunchtime in temperatures of 30 degrees, was a reminder that even the football-daft Brazilians stop when the going gets too hot, even for the very tough. It is called a mid-season break and it occurs in Brazil's hottest month of the year - January.

Having said that, there were a few joggers and public image bodybuilders flaunting their defiance around the huge dust-bowl. But then it had rained angrily for 48 hours, causing the slum-dwellings to slip down the mountainsides. People need a release.

But the fitness freaks were the exceptions. Even before a ball has been kicked there is still a sense of implausibility that anyone could come up with an idea that not only wrecked many domestic leagues' arrangements, but sacrificed that tradition under a sweltering sky.

An injection of enthusiasm is what is required and maybe some will arrive in the 80,000 capacity Morumbi Stadium in Sao Paulo tonight.

Then Real Madrid step out to meet Al-Nassr and, if the Spaniards treat it as a serious exercise, then Al-Dabal and Blatter may find some vindication.

When else would the Saudis meet such glorious opposition? A cynic might reply: "When they next pay them to come over," but the point is that Saudi football is relatively impoverished, not the Saudi nation.

Certainly the Al-Nassr coach, the Yugoslav Milan Zivadinovic, has no qualms about the tournament. "It's a great idea, FIFA deserve compliments," said Zivadinovic. "Usually clubs from this region aren't in the limelight of international football." Real Madrid are and have been ever since their famous white kits lit up the world when European football was in its developing days back in the mid-1950s.

Chelsea, holding their one and only league title, did not enter the first European Cup in 1955 because of the Football league's worries about "fixture congestion" and missed out competing against the likes of Alfredo di Stefano, scorer in each of the first five European Cup finals, all won by Real Madrid.

It was not until Matt Busby challenged the English establishment and entered Manchester United into the 1956/57 competition that it caught the domestic imagination.

Nor was it sure to be that way, but Busby gambled. Real Madrid may lack a Di Stefano today but Alex Ferguson may have felt something of Busby's pioneering spirit in coming here. As he walked around the Maracana yesterday morning - at 8 a.m. when the heat is bearable, though not for Roy Keane who has a knee injury - Ferguson reflected on its unique role in football.

"It's an incredible place," he said, "it's the history, it's Pele's 1000th goal. And it's here." Perhaps the Glaswegian will supply some badly needed romance. FIFA's punt depends on someone doing it.