Bayern Munich vs Auckland City
On a Sunday so quiet that I even wrote a blog, it should come as no surprise that I found myself watching Bayern Munich’s dismantling of Auckland City Football Club at the TQL Stadium in Cincinnati.
With an open mind and little idea what to expect, apart from three minutes of Inter Miami vs Al Ahly highlights, I watched my first proper match of the tournament. What would this become? A glorified procession of post-season friendlies or the beginning of what could become a mainstay global tournament. From the commentary team’s point of view, its very purpose is to unite “fans and clubs” alike.
The pre-game build felt akin to one of England’s Euro qualifying games against San Marino. Auckland City are, unsurprisingly, the only amateur side in the competition, as a result of their victory in the Oceania Champions League. Day jobs include a salesman for Coca Cola, forklift drivers as well as estate agents, so it’s hardly surprising that many members of the team have had to take their entire allocation of annual leave to play in the tournament. A worthy sacrifice no doubt.
The atmosphere at the TQL Stadium felt pretty hollow watching on television, which isn’t exactly surprising given the teams aren’t rivals, and it’s a group stage game at any rate. Watching PSG vs Atlético Madrid later in the day, a significantly bigger game on paper, produced a similar result in terms of atmosphere and really did feel like a pre-season game in terms of the energy in the crowd.
Official attendance for Bayern Munch vs Auckland City was supposedly 21,000, or 5,000 short of the stadium’s total capacity but I suspect this number is overstated given the amount of spare seats that were visible on TV alone. Ticket sales are looking to be an issue at this tournament already with prices slashed and fans moved around the ground to make attendances look deceptively higher on TV..
This certainly is at a juxtaposition with FIFA’s clear attempt at a cash grab in revamping the tournament in the first place, although given DAZN (Saudi Arabia) have already paid $1 billion for the rights to the tournament I’m not sure they’ll be too concerned. On top of that, the Saudi Public Investment Fund have been announced as an official partner of the tournament with the PIF being advertised around the ground throughout the game.
All in all, it was hard to take much out of this game given the difference in quality between the two squads but it made for an interesting and amusing watch nonetheless and, dare I say it, I don’t completely hate the individual player walk-ons. It’s unique at least.
Monday’s offering – LA FC vs Chelsea
After a searing hot June Monday, what better way to relax than by tuning into the very latest the Club World Cup had to offer in the form of Chelsea vs LAFC.
Channel 5 have been very kind to enter some form of partnership with DAZN and nowhere will this have been felt more than at ITV studios when they see the reduced audience figures for last night’s Love Island episode.
The attendance issues at this game were by far the worst I’ve seen in the tournament on a game I’ve watched. A few friends are actually over in the US and one sent over a video 11 minutes before kick off when they were in their seat, in the ground. So empty did the ground look, that I assumed there were WiFi issues around the stadium and it had delayed sending.
The view from the TV cameras confirmed this wasn’t the case, with an incredibly wide and zoomed out shot doing no favours. Despite the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta opting not to open its upper tier for the game, everywhere you looked you could see empty seats. The only areas of the ground not suffering quite so badly were the highly sought after, and no doubt cheaper, seats behind both goals.
LA FC had filled a small grouping of seats dressed in their home black and gold kit which must’ve been a good experience for their fans given they were just founded in 2018. Indeed, their participation in the tournament was only confirmed a few weeks ago due to Club Léon having to forfeit their place due to the club sharing the same owners as CF Pachuca.
Selling only 22,137 seats out of a total of 71,000 isn’t an amazing look. However, it’s worth bearing in mind that the game was played at 3pm Atlanta time, on a Monday afternoon, with tickets going for $250 until the day before the match. Friends who attended the game found extra tickets added to their account, presumably by FIFA.
In this aspect FIFA can’t really win as they either play the games at horrendous times for fans in Europe, or accept that games will not sell out. But then it begs the question that surely anyone with half a brain could’ve seen this exact scenario happening in the first place. Did anyone ask for this tournament?
For LA FC, this game fell in the very middle of the season and at times they played some positive, fast football and were unlucky not to get a goal.
For Chelsea, you could tell that the players were at the end of a long season in a game they realistically knew they had the quality to win without going all out and that’s what they did.
The 2-0 win was far from pretty but it did give fans the chance to see a debut for Liam Delap, signed for £30 million from Ipswich two weeks ago, which certainly produced one of the louder cheers in the stadium. 2 shoves later, he had his first goal contribution for the club. A perfectly weighted ball that was met well by a late Enzo Fernandez run into the box.
I’m not too surprised to see this tournament have such a flat start, a lot of football has been played this season and given the mismatches in opposition, these group games felt slightly inevitable. However, as it stands it’s not a good look for FIFA, and they risk being left with egg on their face if something doesn’t change quickly.
The Shed Diaries 