Waiting on a Waitakere United Miracle

By: Daryl | December 6th, 2007

Waitakere United with the FIFA Club World Cup AC Milan flew into Japan today for the FIFA World Club Cup, apparently dressed for success in very nice club blazers. It’s the fourth edition of the FIFA tournament (featuring champions from the world’s football confederations) and so far South America owns the trophy. Specifically Brazil owns the trophy with Corinthians winning the inaugural 2000 tournament (before everything went wrong for them) São Paulo beating Liverpool in the 2005 final and Internacional seeing off Barcelona in 2006. This year South America is represented by a Riquelme-less Boca Juniors, and the world holds its breath for the semi-inevitable AC Milan vs Boca Juniors final. But I’ll be cheering for New Zealand’s mighty Waitakere United.

The qualified teams are (drumroll please…)

Boca Juniors of Argentina, winners of the Copa Libertadores
AC Milan of Italy, winnners of the UEFA Champions League
Étoile du Sahel of Tunisia, winnners of the CAF Champions League
Pachuca from Mexico, winners of the CONCACAF Champions Cup
Urawa Reds from Japan, winners of the AFC Champions League

and nearly qualified are (one more drumroll…)

Sepahan from Iran, runners up in the AFC Champions League
Waitakere United from New Zealand, winners of the OFC Champions League

It’s not as complicated as it looks. Actually it is, but here goes anyway: The new format had guaranteed a spot for a Japanese club to promote local interest and the plan was for said Japanese team to playoff against the Oceania champions (Waitakere United) for a spot among the final six teams. But then Japan’s Urawa Reds went and won the AFC Champions League anyway, so it was decided that the AFC Champions League runners up (Sepahan) would play off against Waitakere instead.

If you’re wondering why the Oceania champions have to win a playoff game just to get in the competition, it’s because FIFA hates Oceania and wants the entire continent to relocate to another planet. See every World Cup final spots allocation system ever for further evidence.

But FIFA loves it some big teams. So Boca and Milan will be seeded through to the semi-finals just for being famous. Étoile and Pachuca will play what’s technically a quarter final, with the winner going through to face Boca in the semis. Meanwhile the winner of the Sepahan vs Waitakere playoff will then face Urawa Reds in the other quarter final, with the winner of that game going on to face AC Milan in the other semi-final.

Still with me? I’m not. But luckily it’s all layed out in a handy bracket format on FIFA’s website. Basically Waitakere United would have to play twice as many games as Milan or Boca if they actually wanted to win the thing, despite being champions of their confederation. I’ve got two reasons for supporting Waitakere. One is to stick it to FIFA, the other is that 36 year old Neil Emblem, formerly of my beloved Wolverhampton Wanderers, is their centre forward.

Waitakere kick off the Club World Cup when they face Sepahan in the playoff game tomorrow at 7:45pm local time, with the final taking place on Sunday December 16th.