While the European leagues are defined and many advance their logistics for the 2025 Club World Cup, others, who are not going to compete, see with concern what is yet to come.
It will be the first time that an orbital contest with 32 participants is played, a pride for FIFA but an inconvenience of calendar that has the national teams with the spike hair.
The competition, in 12 cities in the United States, will be a great physical challenge for soccer players, which can hardly face the demands of clubs and selections at the same time.
Will Colombia lose players for the World Cup?
The coach Néstor Lorenzo now has a complex situation in hands: there are three players who are usually summoned, in fact almost four, who would have the problem of the crossing of calendars.
This is Richard Ríos (Palmeiras), Kevin Castaño (River Plate) and Jhon Arias (Fluminense), two usual headlines and one that has been alternative and usually has prominence in the national team. A room, practically outside, is James Rodríguez (León de México), whose case is before the TAS after the decision of the FIFA to exclude it for a multiprophity conflict.
However, there is a reality for all that is, among other things, the reason for the complaints of the unions from different countries to oppose the large number of matches that soccer players must face: they have the obligation, by regulation, to face the World Cup and the calls of their national teams.
Except Argentina, which is already classified, Conmebol teams will need their best men to certify the quota to the 2026 World Cup in the next double qualifying date, which is June 5/6 and 10, which will have the right time to then present their clubs for the first match of the Club World Cup, which is June 14.
“So that there is no doubt, the obligation of the clubs participating in the competition to give in to their players in the international period from June 2 to 10, 2025,” says the text that the clubs and the selections, coming from FIFA itself.
Does it mean that the selected ones about club coaches will be imposed? What is expected is that there will be a kind of negotiation between them so that the former take into account loads and other physical aspects, and the latter can handle them if they finally have their countries the peremptory need to have them. In this way no one will be forced to a national call.
It is what will surely happen in Argentina, which will probably have a call without several world champions involved in the Club World Cup.
What will happen in Colombia? That is the real issue that Lorenzo must resolve. Give Rest to Arias and Ríos, the usual headlines, and staying with a chestnut or without potential convened such as Miguel Borja, Kevin Fuentes, Nelson Deossa or Gabriel Fuentes, all ever summoned in their administration, is the risk that the national interest in the clubs must assess? Strictly speaking, it should be. The sacrifice, in the end, would only do the players.
