FIFA Club World Cup: Ranking all 32 participants

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It’s been nearly a decade in the making, but Gianni Infantino’s big idea, the expanded Club World Cup, is finally here.

The plan was for the best 32 club sides to finally end the arguments over who is by far the greatest team the world has ever seen, but whether it will or not is another matter. We’ve never had a tournament like this, not on this sort of scale. There will be teams facing each other who have had no business being in the same competition — Paris Saint-Germain vs Seattle Sounders, Real Madrid vs Pachuca, and what promises to be one of the all-time great mismatches, Bayern Munich vs Auckland City.

To try to give a better idea of what to expect over the next few weeks in the United States, we have come up with a ranking system for the clubs involved.

The first thing to say is that this is not simply ranking based on how good each team are on the pitch. We have used some metrics that measure on-field performance, but we were also interested in comparing the clubs in terms of their global profiles and financial muscle.

The five criteria we have used are:

• Their Opta Power Ranking, which awards a score out of 100 to every club side in the world, based on weighted results.
• Cumulative transfer spend over the past five years
• Average attendance for their home games last season
• Total social-media followers (on X, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok)
• Continental titles (top-level only: so the Champions League or equivalent, not the Europa League) won in their history

We ranked each club in each category from one to 32, then divided by five to give an overall score — the lower the score, the higher the ranking. We did, however, apply different weighting to some of those categories, placing more emphasis on the Opta ratings (on the basis that it ranks recent performance) and slightly diminishing the importance of all-time continental title wins. The latter are important, but also hard to judge on equal terms, given the relative strengths of the different football federations.

You may think some of these criteria are irrelevant, you may disagree with the methodology, you may object to where your team are ranked. But we hope this will give you some sense of the hierarchy of the teams taking part in this first 32-side Club World Cup, and help you know what to expect a little more.

32. Auckland City

The Opta Power Rankings enlist a seemingly very accurate system. Those people know what they’re talking about. So, when you want to consider Auckland City’s chances of producing a shock result at the Club World Cup, you should be aware that the rankings place the New Zealand amateur side 4,928th in the world (4,324 places below the next-lowest team competing in this tournament), which is slightly above English non-League team Kidderminster Harriers and Mighty Tigers FC, who are currently 10th in Malawi’s Super League. Except for being the best team in both their homeland’s domestic league and under the flag of the Oceania confederation (New Zealand also has two professional clubs in the mostly Australian A-League, where the top sides each season qualify for the Asian Champions League instead), Auckland City are the very epitome of football minnows.

The Athletic’s score: 161

Auckland City’s homely Kiwitea Street stadium (Phil Walter/Getty Images)

31. Ulsan

​​The dominant team in South Korean football over the past few seasons, Ulsan secured their third K-League title in a row last season (the current one has been underway since February), and it’s that sort of consistency which has earned them their place, being the best-ranked team from the Asian region over the four-year qualifying period. Their form has been less consistent in the early stages of this season, but they are in one of the tournament’s more open groups, along with Borussia Dortmund from Germany, Brazil’s Fluminense and Mamelodi Sundowns of South Africa, so they have a very real chance of making the knockout rounds.

The Athletic’s score: 156.5

30. Al Ain

Football in the United Arab Emirates exists in a slightly odd space, as far as non-Middle Eastern audiences are concerned. Their clubs don’t have the financial clout of their Saudi Arabian or even Qatari equivalents when it comes to attracting expensive foreign talent, but that hasn’t limited Abu Dhabi-based Al Ain’s success: they qualified through winning the 2024 Asian Champions League last May, with some gusto too (they battered Japan’s Yokohama F. Marinos 6-3 on aggregate in the final), their second continental title after the 2003 edition. More recent form is less certain: they didn’t win any of their eight games in the 2025 Asian Champions League and finished fifth in the UAE’s domestic league last month, having sacked coach Hernan Crespo in November. Former Watford manager Vladimir Ivic leads them to America, but with expectations uncertain.

The Athletic’s score: 156

29. ES Tunis

ES Tunis, also known as Esperance Sportive de Tunis, may feel slightly aggrieved at their lowly rating, given they are one of Africa’s biggest clubs and have won 34 Tunisian league titles. Until just last week, they had never won a domestic treble but that all changed when they lifted the Tunisian Cup, to add it to the league and the African nation’s super cup. They suffer in our assessment due to their reasonably lowly Opta ranking, small transfer spend and having their home attendances limited for security reasons (they can get huge crowds for African Champions League matches). Either way, they come into their fourth Club World Cup in great form and will fancy their chances of springing a surprise or two in a group containing Chelsea of the Premier League, MLS side LAFC and Brazil’s Flamengo.

The Athletic’s score: 139

28. Urawa Red Diamonds

Another club who aren’t arriving at the tournament at the top of their game, Urawa are here after winning the 2022 Asian Champions League. Since then, things haven’t been brilliant: the Saitama club finished 13th in the 20-team J-League last season after the departure of several key players, their coach and technical director. But in truth, the question probably shouldn’t be ‘What’s happened to them since 2022?’, more ‘How did they win it in the first place?’. They scraped through the group stage as a best runner-up, fortunately drew Malaysian and Thai sides in the first two knockout rounds and were significant underdogs in the final against Al Hilal, but upset their Saudi opponents 2-1 over two legs.

The Athletic’s score: 138

Urawa will have devoted backing from their fans (Yuichi Yamazaki/AFP via Getty Images)

27. Seattle Sounders

One of three MLS clubs in this tournament, the Sounders are here by virtue of their 2022 Concacaf Champions League triumph. They became the first side from the United States to win that competition for 22 years and while that feels like some time ago now, results have been pretty consistent since, with Seattle placing second (2023) and fourth in the Western Conference in the past two regular seasons and then losing in the quarter-finals (2023) and semi-finals of the MLS Cup play-offs, which decide the league’s champions. Their big average home attendances (30,776, only Atlanta United and Charlotte do better crowds in MLS) at Luem Field, where they’ll play all three group matches, boost their rankings here.

The Athletic’s score: 136

26. Mamelodi Sundowns

Probably the best team in sub-Saharan Africa, Pretoria’s Sundowns come into the tournament on a slightly downbeat note, after losing to Egyptian upstarts Pyramids in the CAF Champions League final last month. They are the team of African football confederation president Patrice Motsepe, although since his election to that post they have been run by his son, Tholipe, who has continued to invest millions from the family’s mining enterprises. This has allowed them to become dominant in South Africa (they’ve won the last eight domestic titles) and increasingly competitive continent-wide, too. It also means they can go shopping further afield, notably recruiting Brazilian forwards Lucas Ribeiro and Arthur Sales, and Chilean midfielder Marcelo Allende.

The Athletic’s score: 134.5

25. Pachuca

The club who survived FIFA’s hardline over multi-club ownership rules: both Pachuca and fellow Mexicans Club Leon are controlled by Grupo Pachuca, and in May a combination of FIFA and the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled that Leon couldn’t participate in this tournament, despite having qualified by winning the 2023 Concacaf Champions League. So Pachuca are flying the flag, but they arrive surrounded by some uncertainty: head coach Guillermo Almada, the man who took them to their own continental title in 2024, resigned in May, with former Mexico national team coach Jaime Lozano taking over at short notice.

The Athletic’s score: 132

24. Wydad Casablanca

For the bigger European sides, there’s a sense that they’ll need some convincing that the Club World Cup will be a worthwhile endeavour. For Wydad, it could be transformational: the money they will earn directly from participating is one thing, but the kudos from competing on the world stage is another, both in terms of status and future earning potential. How well they will actually do is another matter: they finished a pretty distant third in the Moroccan league last month, and have a tough group, though admittedly it includes two European giants — Manchester City and Juventus — who are in a state of flux.

The Athletic’s score: 127.5

23. LAFC

Remember when Yugoslavia got thrown out of the 1992 European Championship finals and Denmark took their place and went on to win the tournament? The precedent is there, although LAFC probably won’t produce a sequel over the next few weeks. The MLS team replaced the disqualified Club Leon in the competition by winning a recent play-off against Mexicans Club America and, given LAFC’s pedigree in recent years (two Western Conference championships, one MLS Cup, finalists in the 2023 Concacaf Champions League), they’ll be aiming for the knockout phase.

The Athletic’s score: 124.5

LAFC celebrate beating Club America in their qualification play-off (Jessie Alcheh/Getty Images)

22. Red Bull Salzburg

This is where FIFA’s longer-range qualifying criteria might backfire slightly. Because while, a couple of seasons ago, Salzburg were perennial Austrian champions and Champions League mainstays, this year they only avoided landing in the third-tier Conference League by a point. Pep Lijnders, Jurgen Klopp’s former assistant at Liverpool and now on Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City staff, was appointed as head coach last summer but then sacked before Christmas. Though results improved after his departure, they will travel to America as the weakest European team in the competition.

The Athletic’s score: 122

21. Fluminense

​​Plenty has changed at Fluminense since they won the 2023 Copa Libertadores final. Then head coach Fernando Diniz was swallowed up by the Brazil national team and spat back out again in a matter of months, the ‘old stager who won loads of stuff in Europe but is back at his boyhood club’ spot is filled by Thiago Silva this time after it was Marcelo for that 2023 title, but the main difference might be that, to be frank, Fluminense aren’t that good these days. The Rio de Janeiro side finished 13th in the 20-team Brazilian top flight last year, and sacked Diniz’s replacement, fellow former Brazil coach Mano Menezes, in March just a week into this season.

The Athletic’s score: 122

20. Inter Miami

Only 146th in Opta’s Power Ranking and they didn’t win a tournament to reach the Club World Cup, but Lionel Messi FC Inter Miami were never going to be allowed to miss this one. What they lack in titles, they make up for in both star power (Messi is joined by his former Barcelona team-mates Luis Suarez, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba) and a huge following, not so much in person (their 20,663 average attendance is the lowest of the tournament’s three MLS clubs) but certainly online, with 63 million followers across the main social networks giving them the 12th biggest virtual support among the 32 teams and bumping them up our list.

The Athletic’s score: 119

Lionel Messi has given Inter Miami’s global profile a huge boost (Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images)

19. Botafogo

Botafogo are not traditionally one of Brazilian football’s biggest clubs – until last year, they had only ever won two Brazilian titles (eight clubs have four or more, topped by Palmeiras’ 12). Under U.S. businessman John Textor’s ownership, that has changed. A third title, their first since 1995, came last year (they should have won it in 2023, too, but suffered an almighty two-wins-in-17 collapse to finish fifth). They also won the Copa Libertadores in November, becoming the final qualifiers for this Club World Cup (until that recent LAFC/Club America play-off). Rio-based Botafogo only have small-ish crowds (an average of 27,412) and that one continental trophy to their name, but place fairly high on our list due to being the highest spending club outside of Europe or Saudi Arabia, with big fees spent on players including attacking midfielder Thiago Almada (up to $30million from Atlanta United of MLS).

The Athletic’s score: 104.5

18. Monterrey

It’s fairly plausible that Monterrey could meet Real Madrid in the quarter-finals. We mention this because that would see Sergio Ramos facing one of his old teams, wearing a squad number that commemorates maybe his greatest moment wearing the all white: his No 93 for the Mexican side is a nod to the stoppage-time minute he scored Madrid’s equaliser in the 2014 Champions League final against city rivals Atletico before they went on to win their 10th European title in extra time. This is a team with plenty of stars — along with Ramos, there’s Sergio Canales, Lucas Ocampos and Hector Moreno — but they have proved slightly difficult to turn into a cohesive unit, head coach Martin Demichelis having left a few weeks ago after a quarter-final exit from the domestic title play-offs. Former assistant to Pep Guardiola, Domenec Torrent, will lead them to the U.S. instead. They’re a little higher than you might think, thanks to their five Concacaf Champions League wins.

The Athletic’s score: 93.5

17. Al Ahly

Africa’s best team and old-format Club World Cup regulars Al Ahly (this will be their 10th appearance) basically qualified for this tournament not once, not twice, but three times, having won the African Champions League in 2021, 2022 and 2024. Only the mighty Real Madrid and just-as-mighty Auckland City (well, in Oceania they are!) have won more continental titles than the men from Cairo, with their 12 in the Champions League to go with just the 45 Egyptian ones. Al Ahly tend to come up short against good European or South American opposition, though — they have reached four semi-finals in the far smaller, annual Club World Cup this decade, losing them all.

The Athletic’s score: 87.5

16. Boca Juniors

One of the truly great names in football and three-time winners of the Intercontinental Cup (the precursor of, and successor to, the annual Club World Cup), whose first match of the tournament against Benfica on Monday could prove vital, given their group also comprises big favourites Bayern Munich and minnows Auckland City. Boca place high on a couple of our metrics, notably average attendances (53,867) and continental titles (six). If there was a metric for wonderkids or ageing legends, they’d place even higher; teenage midfielder Milton Delgado and veteran striker Edinson Cavani, now 38, are in their ranks.

The Athletic’s score: 85.5

Edinson Cavani is a familiar face for Boca Juniors (Marcelo Endelli/Getty Images)

15. Palmeiras

The most successful domestic Brazilian team of all time in terms of national titles, but not the highest-placed Brazilian club in our list, mostly owing to the Sao Paulo club having a much smaller following than Flamengo. Ranked 76th by Opta, they’ve been drawn in one of the hardest groups to call alongside Porto of Portugal (56th), Al Ahly (98th) and Inter Miami (146th). Palmeiras won the Copa Libertadores in 2020 and 2021, then the Brazilian title in 2022 and 2023, before big-spending Botafogo took their domestic crown last year.

The Athletic’s score: 81

14. Al Hilal

Qualifiers by dint of winning the Asian Champions League in 2021, Al Hilal have somehow struggled on without their star signing Neymar this season, who arrived for €90million (£75.9m; $102.8m) and on a salary of €150m, but only played three competitive games for them due to injury. However, the men from Riyadh are another team who will come into the tournament in some state of flux. Jorge Jesus, after leading them to the Saudi Pro League title last season, left by ‘mutual consent’ in May when they were six points off top spot in the latest one with five games to go. Replacement Simone Inzaghi’s first game, after quitting Inter following their Champions League final defeat at the end of May, will be at the Club World Cup, so he has minimal time to implement changes. Oh yeah, and that match is against Real Madrid.

The Athletic’s score: 76

13. Porto

Add Porto to the list of teams who don’t exactly come into the Club World Cup in fine fettle. They finished third in the Primeira Liga for the second season in a row – the last time they finished outside Portugal’s top two in successive seasons was in 1976 and 1977. They were dumped out of their country’s main cup competition by mid-table Moreirense and lost to Roma in the Europa League’s knockout phase play-offs, meaning there was no silver lining to speak of. New-ish head coach Martin Anselmi came highly rated from Cruz Azul in Mexico but has a job on his hands navigating a run in the Club World Cup, although having an excellent goalkeeper in Portugal’s No 1 Diogo Costa and an exciting young Spanish striker in Samu Aghehowa (who has scored 25 goals for them this season) will surely help.

The Athletic’s score: 75.5

12. Flamengo

Having one of global football’s largest fanbases has pushed Flamengo up our list. They get the highest attendances in Brazil (54,790 on average in the famed Maracana in Rio) and have 90million online followers (the 10th highest on our list). They qualified by virtue of winning the 2022 Copa Libertadores, and have some Club World Cup pedigree, reaching the final in 2019 before losing 1-0 to Liverpool after extra time. Flamengo’s bid to reach the latter stages of the competition may well be assisted by the midfield experience of Jorginho, who has joined from Arsenal in time for the tournament.

The Athletic’s score: 67.5

11. River Plate

One of the benefits of the Club World Cup will be getting to watch a player that many of us are probably mostly familiar with through the prism of transfer gossip columns. In this case, it’s River prodigy Franco Mastantuono, a hugely talented 17-year-old subject to the sort of unhelpful comparisons you’d expect, but who is also attracting interest from all the places you’d expect. They are led by Marcelo Gallardo, who returned to the Buenos Aires club last August after stepping down in 2022 and later having a brief spell managing in Saudi Arabia.

The Athletic’s score: 66.5

Franco Mastantuono is highly rated at River Plate (Marcelo Endelli/Getty Images)

10. Benfica

A ‘sounds about right’ slot of 24th in the Opta Power Ranking, very decent attendances of 58,746 in Lisbon’s beautiful Estadio da Luz (‘Stadium of Light’), low on social media numbers (only 18million) but big on spending, having laid out £430million in the past five years (only seven clubs spent more). That said, they have recouped vast sums from player sales: Enzo Fernandez (to Chelsea), Goncalo Ramos (Paris Saint-Germain), Darwin Nunez (Liverpool), Ruben Dias (Manchester City) and Joao Neves (also PSG) generated more than £300m between them. It’s a hugely successful financial model, but one that inhibits success on the European stage.

The Athletic’s score: 59

9. Juventus

When the ‘qualifying period’ for this Club World Cup began, Juventus had not long won the Italian league for a ninth year in a row, and the idea that by the time the tournament finally came around they would be relative also-rans was pretty fanciful. This season, however, they were never really in the Serie A title race, flopped out of the Champions League to Dutch opponents PSV in its first knockout round and only secured a top-four finish on the final day of the domestic campaign last month. Igor Tudor is still their head coach, but the fact that this has been in doubt less than three months after his appointment suggests they won’t be among the favourites to win this competition. Still, they come out reasonably well in our rankings, partly because of their strong global following and financial muscle.

The Athletic’s score: 51.5

8. Atletico Madrid

Forever the bridesmaid in La Liga. Well, not quite the bridesmaid, but whoever the next-in-line is after that (flower girl?). Basically, Atletico finish third a lot (seven times in the Spanish top flight’s past 11 seasons). They’re also, under the obdurate instructions of Diego Simeone, a huge pain in the backside to beat, which helps explain why they’ve reached three Champions League quarter-finals in the past six seasons. One of four sides participating in this Club World Cup to have never won a top-tier continental title (along with Inter Miami, LAFC and Red Bull Salzburg), they had the second-best defence in La Liga this season, and they can score a few, too. Julian Alvarez got 29 in all competitions (which won’t be a surprise to Manchester City fans) and Alexander Sorloth 24 (which will be a surprise to Crystal Palace fans).

The Athletic’s score: 49.5

7. Borussia Dortmund

Dortmund are in the slightly curious position of being the only team at the Club World Cup who haven’t won either a domestic or continental title in the past four years (aside from Inter Miami, who qualified pretty much as hosts, or via FIFA’s ‘Best team that currently employs Lionel Messi’ clause). But things are certainly looking better for the German side now than they did a few months ago, with January appointment Niko Kovac having fixed up a team that was spiralling in the first half of the season. They’re in a pretty open group, but it is tricky to get a proper handle on their chances. They have their incredible home support to thank for a bump in our rankings, with their average home attendance second only to River Plate’s.

The Athletic’s score: 49

6. Chelsea

When they finished in the bottom half of the Premier League two years ago, the notion of Chelsea competing with some of the best club sides in the world was fairly laughable. It still feels a little far-fetched now, but their upward trajectory is undeniable and overdue (they officially have the most expensive squad ever built in the history of the sport). They qualified for this tournament due to winning the Champions League in 2021, which feels like 40 years ago rather than four. Back then, Thomas Tuchel was manager, Timo Werner was up front and Olivier Giroud (also in the Club World Cup with LAFC) was on the bench. In our rankings, the west Londoners place highest on transfer spend by around £700million. So far, that has won them the Conference League, European football’s third-tier competition, but will the Club World Cup follow?

The Athletic’s score: 42

Chelsea celebrate winning the Conference League final last month (Stuart Franklin/Getty Images)

5. Inter

A club for whom the timing of this tournament is slightly unfortunate: had it been held six months ago, Inter would have been in their pomp, defending Serie A champions and aiming for a remarkable quadruple. As it is, they arrive on something of a downer, having lost a Coppa Italia semi-final to city rivals Milan, the title to Napoli, the Champions League final to PSG and the architect of their recent successes, coach Simone Inzaghi, who has now high-tailed it to lead Saudi club Al Hilal into this competition instead. One problem with this revamped Club World Cup coming so soon after the European season ends is that many teams taking part will be physically exhausted: after all that, Inter will probably be mentally spent, too.

The Athletic’s score: 34.5

4. Manchester City

They come out pretty well from our rankings, but how will that translate to City’s actual prospects at the Club World Cup? Their domestic season began like old times, but absolutely cratered in the middle and only barely picked up enough momentum for them to salvage something at the end. This team feels like it is at a generational crossroads, and opposition managers are seemingly finding it easier to combat manager Pep Guardiola’s approach. All that said, they will be among the favourites when the action begins in America, where success could add a shine to their 2024-25 campaign.

The Athletic’s score: 31.5

3. Paris Saint-Germain

PSG have been an incredibly wealthy club with lofty ambitions for some time, and now they’ve cracked the Champions League code they’ll look to become an established global superpower in every which way in the coming years. After their 5-0 humbling of Inter in that final a couple of weeks ago they are up to third in the Opta rankings, while in our list they are third on social media numbers and are planning to dramatically change the low continental honours and average attendance figures in the coming years (plans for a massive new stadium are being considered). State ownership of football clubs works. What a fairytale.

The Athletic’s score: 28

Senny Mayulu scores against Inter in the Champions League final (Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images)

2. Real Madrid

A team in flux, but perhaps in a positive way. After a thoroughly disappointing season domestically and in the Champions League, despite the many goals of new forward Kylian Mbappe, Madrid now have maybe the most exciting young coach in the world taking charge of his first games with them. Who knows whether Xabi Alonso will have them looking over the next few weeks anything like what he wants them to eventually look like, but with early summer signings Trent Alexander-Arnold and Dean Huijsen in place, their team is certainly going to look different. Madrid trail the club who are top of our rankings partly because of their relatively meagre transfer spend in recent times (‘only’ €303million, as opposed to the first-place team’s €606.5m) and their trophyless (so far) 2024-25 season.

The Athletic’s score: 26.5

1. Bayern Munich

Surprise winners, perhaps, but they beat Real Madrid not just on transfer spend (splashing more than €600million in the past five years on the likes of Harry Kane, Matthijs de Ligt, Sadio Mane, Michael Olise and Joao Palhinha) but also average attendances (75,000 to Madrid’s 72,692) and the Opta Power Ranking, which has Bayern sixth and Madrid eighth. Their social media following only ranks fifth on the list, albeit their figure is boosted by having the second-highest number of Facebook followers. Good old legacy fans. Anyway, it’s hard to predict their Club World Cup chances; they coasted to this season’s Bundesliga title by 13 points, but came disappointingly unstuck against Inter in the Champions League quarter-finals. Either way, they’re massive.

The Athletic’s score: 22

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Kelsea Petersen)

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