FIFA Chief of Global Football Development Arsène Wenger has said the new FIFA Club World Cup™ will help FIFA move closer to the goal of making football truly global as it provides “an opportunity for clubs to become stronger”.

The FIFA Club World Cup 2025™ will see 32 of the best teams on the planet converge on the United States between 14 June and 13 July this year to contest the right to be called the first true club world champions.

With millions of fans expected to attend games and billions around the globe following the tournament, it will mark the first time club football has united the world with the qualified clubs representing all six confederations.

"We want to develop club football everywhere in the world and the FIFA Club World Cup is an opportunity for clubs to become stronger,” said Mr Wenger at an event at the Egyptian Football Association headquarters in the African country’s capital, Cairo.

“At the moment the strongest clubs are in Europe and everyone knows that. We want strong football clubs everywhere in the world because that's part of our programme, to make football big everywhere, and the Club World Cup can contribute to making clubs stronger.”

Clubs qualify for the tournament either by winning their confederation’s premier club competition or via the ranking pathway, which is determined by a club’s performances in their leading continental competition over the four-year qualifying period.

It means each confederation’s champions will be represented, affording clubs a unique opportunity to measure themselves against top opponents from other regions and continents. It also opens the door to some of the game’s stand-out individual performers, whose national side have only a slim chance of lifting the FIFA World Cup™, getting their hands on a global trophy.

"Not all people have the chance to be born in a country that has a chance of winning the World Cup, but if you are the best player in the world you can still become a world champion because you played in the biggest clubs in the world,” said Mr Wenger. “It (also) creates a new opportunity, because you could say that the new target for a football player, the utmost thing, would be to be world champion with your country and world champion with your club. That is something that is a new target.”

Accompanied by Director of Global Football Development Steven Martens, Mr Wenger was in Egypt to further discuss the FIFA Talent Development Scheme (TDS) in the country.

Aimed at providing every young talent, girl or boy, with a pathway to the professional game wherever they are in the world, the TDS has already benefitted more than 200 FIFA Member Associations (MAs), while over 20 FIFA Talent Academies have been opened worldwide and many more are in the pipeline.

Mr Wenger said he expected 40+ such facilities to be in place by the end of this year and the next 20 in the start-up phase, with the goal to have 75 elite FIFA Talent Academies established by the end of 2027.

“What you need to get the best football players in Egypt a chance is to find the talent, to train the talent, and to play the talent,” said Mr Wenger, who was given a tour of the EFA’s new elite performance centre by MA president and FIFA Council member Hany Abo Rida.

“We want to develop football at the top level, to the top level, everywhere, and here is one of these places in the world, where you have passion, many young people in the country, and huge technical qualities, and that’s why I believe we can do a great job together.”

He added: “We want to incorporate this in the federation, because the structures in the Egyptian Football Federation are quite good on the competition front, and you are not in a catastrophic situation because you have a good national team, with good football players, you have players who are stars in Europe.

“But we want to help you to have more. Because you can say, if there is somebody – it might another (Mohamed) Salah somewhere in Egypt and you want to find him. There might be a few more that we want to find and to develop. And we can do that together.”