The 2019 FIFA Club World Cup (officially known as the FIFA Club World Cup Qatar 2019 presented by Alibaba Cloud for sponsorship reasons) was the 16th edition of the

FIFA Club World Cup The FIFA Club World Cup (FIFA CWC) is an international men's association football competition organised by the ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' (FIFA), the sport's global sports governing body, governing body. The compe ...

, a

FIFA The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (), more commonly known by its acronym FIFA ( ), is the international self-regulatory governing body of association football, beach soccer, and futsal. It was founded on 21 May 1904 to o ...

-organised international club

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

tournament between the winners of the six continental confederations, as well as the host nation's league champions. The tournament was hosted by

Qatar Qatar, officially the State of Qatar, is a country in West Asia. It occupies the Geography of Qatar, Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it shares Qatar–Saudi Arabia border, its sole land b ...

between 11 and 21 December 2019, taking place at two venues in the city of

Al Rayyan Al Rayyan (; also spelled ''Ar Rayyan'') is the third-largest municipalities of Qatar, municipality in Qatar. Its primary settlement is the Al Rayyan (city), city of the same name, which occupies the entire eastern section and is a part of the Do ...

Real Madrid Real Madrid Club de Fútbol (), commonly referred to as Real Madrid, is a Spanish professional Football club (association football), football club based in Madrid. The club competes in La Liga, th ...

, winners of the last three Club World Cup titles, were unable to defend their title, having been eliminated in the round of 16 of the

2018–19 UEFA Champions League The 2018–19 UEFA Champions League was the 64th season of Europe's premier club football tournament organised by UEFA, and the 27th season since it was renamed from the European Champion Clubs' Cup to the UEFA Champions League. For the first ti ...

. The eventual winners of that competition,

Liverpool Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population ...

, went on to win the Club World Cup for the first time, beating Mexican side

Monterrey Monterrey (, , abbreviated as MtY) is the capital and largest city of the northeastern Mexican state of Nuevo León. It is the ninth-largest city and the second largest metropolitan area, after Greater Mexico City. Located at the foothills of th ...

2–1 in the semi-finals, before requiring

extra time Overtime (OT) or extra time (ET) is an additional period of play to bring a game to a decision and avoid declaring the match a tie or draw where the scores are the same. In some sports, this extra period is played only if the game is required t ...

to claim a 1–0 win over

Flamengo Clube de Regatas do Flamengo (; ), more commonly referred to as simply Flamengo, is a Brazilian multi sports club based in Rio de Janeiro, in the neighborhood of Gávea. It was founded and named after the Flamengo, Rio de Janeiro, Flamengo n ...

in the

final Final, Finals or The Final may refer to: *Final examination or finals, a test given at the end of a course of study or training *Final (competition), the last or championship round of a sporting competition, match, game, or other contest which d ...

Host appointment

With proposals for an expanded Club World Cup, FIFA delayed the announcement of a host. A host was to be announced by FIFA on 15 March 2019, though this was later delayed. On 28 May 2019, FIFA announced that the 2019 and 2020 tournament host would be appointed at the FIFA Council meeting in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, France, on 3 June 2019. Qatar was appointed as the host for the 2019 and 2020 tournaments on 3 June 2019, serving as test events ahead of their hosting of the

2022 FIFA World Cup The 2022 FIFA World Cup was the 22nd FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial world championship for national football teams organized by FIFA. It took place in Qatar from 20 November to 18 December 2022, after the country was awarded the hosting ri ...

. The Club World Cup retained its original format ahead of the expected revamp in

2021 Like the year 2020, 2021 was also heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the emergence of multiple Variants of SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 variants. The major global rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, which began at the end of 2020, continued ...

Qualified teams

Notes

Venues

The tournament was held in the city of

, at

Jassim bin Hamad Stadium Jassim bin Hamad Stadium () is an association football stadium in Doha, Qatar, located about west from the centre of Doha. It is the home of the Al Sadd Sports Club's association football team, who play in the top-flight Qatar Stars League, ...

and

Khalifa International Stadium Khalifa International Stadium (, , ) is a multi-purpose stadium located in Doha, Qatar, around west from the centre of Doha. Its ground comprises a running track and a Pitch (sports field), grass pitch. Opened in 1976, the stadium was named af ...

, which previously hosted matches at the

2011 AFC Asian Cup The 2011 AFC Asian Cup was the 15th edition of the men's AFC Asian Cup, a quadrennial international football tournament organised by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). The finals were held in Qatar from 7 to 29 January 2011. It was the secon ...

, including the

for the latter. A third venue in Al Rayyan, Education City Stadium, was also originally planned to host matches during the tournament, including the final. In December 2019, FIFA moved all three matches (the second semi-final on 18 December and the third place match and final on 21 December) that were due to be played at the Education City Stadium to Khalifa International Stadium after the opening of the Education City Stadium was postponed to early 2020.

Match officials

Five

referee A referee is an official, in a variety of sports and competition, responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport, including sportsmanship decisions such as ejection. The official tasked with this job may be known by a variety of other title ...

s, ten

assistant referee A referee is an official, in a variety of sports and competition, responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport, including sportsmanship decisions such as ejection. The official tasked with this job may be known by a variety of other title ...

s, and six

video assistant referee The video assistant referee (VAR) is a Assistant referee (association football), match official in association football who assists the referee by reviewing decisions using video footage and providing advice to the referee based on those revi ...

s were appointed for the tournament. One support referee was also named for the tournament.

Squads

Each team had to name a 23-man squad (three of whom must be goalkeepers). Injury replacements were allowed until 24 hours before the team's first match.

Matches

The draw of the tournament was held on 16 September 2019, 14:00 CEST (

UTC+2 UTC+02:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +02:00. In ISO 8601, the associated time would be written as 2020-11-08T23:41:45+02:00. As standard time (year-round) Principal cities: Pretoria, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, Por ...

), at the FIFA headquarters in

Zürich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

, to decide the matchups of the second round (between the first round winner and teams from AFC, CAF, and CONCACAF), and the opponents of the two second round winners in the semi-finals (against teams from CONMEBOL and UEFA). At the time of the draw, the identity of the teams from AFC and CONMEBOL were not known. If a match was tied after normal playing time: *For elimination matches,

was played. If still tied after extra time, a

penalty shoot-out The penalty shootout is a method of determining a winner in sports matches that would have otherwise been drawn or tied. The rules for penalty shootouts vary between sports and even different competitions; however, the usual form is similar to pe ...

was held to determine the winner. *For the matches for fifth place and third place, no extra time was played, and a penalty shoot-out was held to determine the winner. All times are local, AST (

UTC+3 UTC+03:00 is an identifier for a UTC offset, time offset from UTC of +03:00. In areas using this time offset, the time is three hours ahead of the Coordinated Universal Time, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Following the ISO 8601 standard, ...

First round

Second round

----

Match for fifth place

Semi-finals

----

Match for third place

Final

Goalscorers

1 own goal * Ali Al-Bulaihi ( Al-Hilal, against

)

Final ranking

Per statistical convention in football, matches decided in

were counted as wins and losses, while matches decided by

were counted as draws.

Awards

The following awards were given at the conclusion of the tournament.

Mohamed Salah Mohamed Salah Hamed Mahrous Ghaly (, ; born 15 June 1992), also known as Mo Salah, is an Egyptian professional Association football, footballer who plays as a right winger or Forward (association football), forward for club Liverpool F.C., L ...

won the Golden Ball award, sponsored by

Adidas Adidas AG (; stylized in all lowercase since 1949) is a German athletic apparel and footwear corporation headquartered in Herzogenaurach, Bavaria, Germany. It is the largest sportswear manufacturer in Europe, and the second largest in the ...

, which is jointly awarded with the

Alibaba Cloud Alibaba Cloud, also known as Aliyun ( zh, p=Ālǐyún, s=阿里云, l=Ali Cloud), is a cloud computing company, a subsidiary of Alibaba Group. Alibaba Cloud provides cloud computing services to online businesses and Alibaba's own e-commerce ecos ...

Award to recognise the player of the tournament. FIFA also named a

man of the match In team sport, a player of the match award (also known as man of the match or woman of the match) is often given to the most outstanding player in a particular match. This can be a player from either team, although the player is generally chose ...

for the best player in each game at the tournament.

Criticism

In 2017, three member countries of the

Gulf Cooperation Council The Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (), also known as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC; ), is a Regional integration, regional, intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental, political, and economic union comprising Ba ...

along with Egypt cut diplomatic ties with Qatar and criminalised trips for their citizens to the country. In October, FIFA sold 200 Club World Cup tickets to fans from Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, and 500 to those from the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. In November 2019,

Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Headquartered in New York City, the group investigates and reports on issues including War crime, war crimes, crim ...

(HRW) criticised FIFA for neglecting fan welfare and selling tickets for the Club World Cup to those banned by their governments. HRW stated that FIFA should be aware of the risks that the football supporters can face in their countries and ensure that they are not exposed to the risk of harassment or prosecution. On 5 November 2019,

Chief Executive Peter Moore assured that the Qatari authorities had permitted

LGBT LGBTQ people are individuals who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning. Many variants of the initialism are used; LGBTQIA+ people incorporates intersex, asexual, aromantic, agender, and other individuals. The gro ...

football fans to attend the FIFA Club World Cup matches in December 2019.

References

External links

FIFA Club World Cup Qatar 2019
FIFA.com
Official website
(Archived) {{DEFAULTSORT:Fifa Club World Cup 2019 Club World Cup

2019 This was the year in which the first known human case of COVID-19 was documented, preceding COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic which was declared by the World Health Organization the following year. Up to that point, 2019 had been described as ...

2019–20 in Qatari football December 2019 sports events in Asia