FIFA Confederations Cup

• 1. Introduction

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  Julian Draxler walked away with the Golden Ball at the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup, the award for the tournament's best player. Germany had just beaten Chile 1-0 in the final to claim their first title in the competition's history. The Confederations Cup ran across ten editions and a quarter century of football. Whether it was truly necessary, and why FIFA eventually cancelled it, were questions the competition answered only at the very end.

• 2. Born Under a King's Name

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  King Fahd of Saudi Arabia organized the competition in 1992 with the help of his country's football federation. He named it the King Fahd Cup, also known as the Confederations Winners Cup or the Intercontinental Championship. Saudi Arabia hosted both the 1992 and 1995 editions, with the Saudi national side competing alongside continental champions from other parts of the world. FIFA had no organizational role at this stage; the competition ran entirely under Saudi auspices.

  FIFA would later designate the 1992 and 1995 editions as the first and second official Confederations Cup tournaments, an act of retroactive recognition. Two older competitions had offered similar concepts without earning that status. The 1980 Mundialito invited former World Cup winners to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the inaugural World Cup. The Artemio Franchi Trophy was played in 1985 and 1993. It brought together the Copa América champions and the UEFA European Championship winners for a direct inter-confederation match. FIFA recognized neither the Mundialito nor the Artemio Franchi Trophy as forerunners to the Confederations Cup.

  The 1997 edition was the first that FIFA organized under its own authority, bringing new institutional backing and ambitions for a genuinely global competition.

• 3. FIFA Takes the Wheel

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  From 1997, FIFA initially staged the competition every two years. After 2005, the schedule shifted to every four years. From that point, the tournament was held in the country that would host the World Cup the following year. The 2001 edition was an exception: it ran in South Korea and Japan before the four-year pattern was fixed.

  Host nations entered automatically, providing themselves with high-level competitive experience during the two years of preparation before the World Cup. The tournament also used roughly half the stadiums designated for that following competition, putting venues and infrastructure to the test.

  Eight teams contested the tournament in total. The continental champions came from the AFC, CAF, CONCACAF, CONMEBOL, OFC, and UEFA, joined by the reigning World Cup holders and the host nation. Those eight were divided into two round-robin groups of four. No two nations from the same confederation could be placed in the same group. That rule had one exception, which occurred in 2017. Russia as host, Germany as World Cup champions, and Portugal as European champions were all UEFA nations. A clean separation was impossible.

  South American and European champions could choose to decline their invitation. When they did, another nation was brought in, usually the runners-up from the competition that had yielded the vacant place.

• 4. The Nations That Said No

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  On four separate occasions, a qualified team turned down its place. Germany twice declined. In 1997, they were replaced by the Czech Republic, the runners-up at UEFA Euro 1996. When Germany declined again in 2003, they did so as the runners-up at the 2002 World Cup. Turkey, who had finished third at that tournament, stepped in.

  France declined their place in the 1999 edition. As the reigning World Cup champions, they were entitled to compete. The 1998 World Cup runners-up, Brazil, took their spot instead. Italy also refused their 2003 invitation, having qualified as runners-up at UEFA Euro 2000.

  Despite the rotating cast of participants, the competitive record over the tournament's existence showed unmistakable patterns. Brazil's results placed them above every other nation in the standings.

• 5. Champions and Record Makers

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  Brazil won the Confederations Cup four times: in 1997, 2005, 2009, and 2013. Their 2013 title came on home soil, as Brazil hosted that edition. No other country came close to matching that total.

  Romário set the individual tournament record by scoring seven goals at the 1997 edition. That remains the highest tally any player has achieved in a single Confederations Cup. Ronaldinho sits at the top of the career scoring chart with nine goals across all editions. Cuauhtémoc Blanco and Fernando Torres each finished with eight career goals. Adriano's career total was seven, matching Romário's across multiple tournaments.

  The Golden Ball, awarded to the tournament's best player, passed through an exceptional list of names. Fernando Redondo won the award at the 1992 edition. Denílson claimed it in 1997. Ronaldinho won it in 1999, and Robert Pires took it in 2001. Thierry Henry won in 2003, Adriano in 2005, and Kaká in 2009. Neymar was the last Brazilian to receive it, taking the 2013 award. The Golden Glove, given to the best goalkeeper, went to Oswaldo Sánchez in 2005, Tim Howard in 2009, and Júlio César in 2013.

  Qatar had been named as host of the 2021 Confederations Cup even before Neymar lifted the 2013 trophy. Those plans would soon unravel.

• 6. The Qatar Problem and the End

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  On the 2nd of December 2010, FIFA awarded Qatar the right to host the 2022 World Cup. The announcement included a parallel commitment: Qatar would also stage the 2021 Confederations Cup as the standard test event. The problem was temperature. Qatar's summer heat raised serious concerns. The same worries drove calls to move the World Cup from its traditional June-July window into November or December.

  On the 25th of February 2015, FIFA announced it would relocate the 2021 Confederations Cup to another country in the Asian Football Confederation. This would allow the competition to run during its usual June-July period without disrupting domestic leagues. As partial compensation, another FIFA event could be held in Qatar in November or December 2021. The 2021 FIFA Club World Cup was one possibility for that slot, serving as the test event in Qatar's place.

  In October 2017, FIFA went further and announced plans to abolish the Confederations Cup entirely by 2021. The replacement would be a quadrennial, 24-team FIFA Club World Cup, moved from December to June. On the 15th of March 2019, FIFA made it official: the Confederations Cup would not be staged again. The 2021 FIFA Arab Cup was held in Qatar as a prelude to the 2022 World Cup. It took on part of the test-event role the Confederations Cup had previously filled.

  In July 2021, UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin and CONMEBOL president Alejandro Domínguez launched efforts to create a new inter-confederation competition. It would pit the Copa América winner against the European Championship winner. Under the proposal, both continental championships would be held two years before the World Cup. The new tournament would follow a year later, in the country due to host the World Cup. On the 1st of June 2022, Argentina beat Italy in the 2022 Finalissima, reviving the CONMEBOL-UEFA Cup of Champions under a new name.