{"id":16934,"date":"2025-07-11T00:14:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T00:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/club-world-cup-arsene-wenger-defends-fantastic-competition-after-jurgen-klopp-comments\/"},"modified":"2025-07-11T00:14:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T00:14:10","slug":"club-world-cup-arsene-wenger-defends-fantastic-competition-after-jurgen-klopp-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/club-world-cup-arsene-wenger-defends-fantastic-competition-after-jurgen-klopp-comments\/","title":{"rendered":"Club World Cup: Arsene Wenger defends &#8216;fantastic competition&#8217; after Jurgen Klopp comments"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Arsene Wenger has responded to Jurgen Klopp&#8217;s claims that the Club World Cup is &#8220;the worst idea ever invented&#8221;, saying teams are in favour of the &#8220;fantastic competition&#8221;.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Former Liverpool manager Klopp <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/articles\/c994p92d5r1o\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">criticised the tournament<\/a> in June, which has been moved to the summer and expanded to 32 teams.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, ex-Arsenal manager Wenger, now Fifa&#8217;s chief of global football development, said the Club World Cup has the full support of the teams, players and managers involved. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">When asked about Klopp&#8217;s comments, Wenger said: &#8220;I am going to give a very boring answer to a very interesting question. Everyone is entitled to an opinion and I don&#8217;t share the view of Jurgen Klopp at all.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I feel a Club World Cup is needed. If you make enquiries to all the clubs who were here then 100% of answers would be that they would want to do it again. That&#8217;s the best answer of what the clubs think of a Club World Cup.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;And the decisive question is do the fans like it or not? We believe the attendances were projected as low and in reality were much higher. The answer is there.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Fifa is also planning to learn lessons in how to deal with the heat and improve the pitches before the pan-North American World Cup in 2026, which will have most of its games in the United States. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The heat in some games was a problem but we tried to combat that with cooling breaks, watering the pitches during the break and overall I feel we learned a lot on that front,&#8221; Wenger said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;In two different venues [there was a problem], one of them was Orlando. But we shouldn&#8217;t underestimate the quality of the permanent [real grass] pitches.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The grass is a bit different here. It&#8217;s a bit harsher or more resistant than in other countries. The pitches were &#8216;flat&#8217;. But once we watered the grass, everyone was happy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Certainly next year in stadiums there will also be more with roofs and the TV times will be more sensitive. At the same time, the weather conditions can be a problem for everybody. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I asked our analysts to analyse the impact of the heat. We found heat of over 35C had an impact on high-speed running, so sprints, not distances. You have to be equipped to deal with it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Chelsea face Paris St-Germain in the final of the competition at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on Sunday. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/articles\/c625dk3g3yko\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Arsene Wenger has responded to Jurgen Klopp&#8217;s claims that the Club World Cup is &#8220;the worst idea ever invented&#8221;, saying teams are in favour of the &#8220;fantastic competition&#8221;. Former Liverpool manager Klopp criticised the tournament in June, which has been moved to the summer and expanded to 32 teams. However, ex-Arsenal manager Wenger, now Fifa&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16934"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16936,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16934\/revisions\/16936"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}