Club World Cup: the CEO of the EPCR says more about the envisaged formula

The rugby of tomorrow is being written today. A few months after the first leaks around the project Club World Cup – which would bring together every 4 years the best teams from the North and the South in a global competition – the thinking heads of the rugby world are already hard at work defining its contours.

A real high-precision geometric exercise to fit a square into a circle as the overloaded schedules of the various stakeholders leave only a tiny margin for maneuver.

The 8 best teams from the Champions Cup group stage qualified

Guest of South Radio Saturday, the general director of EPCR Jacques Raynaudin charge of the Champions Cup and the Challenge Cup, gave information on the formula which would currently hold the rope for the first edition, which would take place in 2028.

During the Club World Cup season, the Champions Cup in its current format would end at the group stage. The 8 best ranked clubs – i.e. the first 2 of each of the 4 groups – would qualify for the trans-hemisphere competition, joining 8 teams from the South whose distribution remains to be defined. This could be 8 teams from Super Rugby Pacific or 6 and 2 from Japanese League One.

Four weeks of competition in June

The following ? Hostilities would resume in June, over four weeksafter the Top 14, Premiership and URC seasons, which would end earlier due to the removal of the 4 dates of the knockout phase of the European Cups.

We would then start again with a final phase which would replace the usual one, with the start of round of 16 whose posters would be defined according to the ranking of the best Super Rugby Pacific teams. The quarters, the semis and the grand final would follow which would define the world champion club. The advantage: this formula would not require an additional date compared to a classic year.

A Super Challenge Cup in parallel with other clubs from the South

But that’s not all. At the same time, a parallel competition would be contested which could be described as a Super Challenge Cup or more trivially as a super consolation, on the same format. It would mix teams from the Champions Cup group stage not qualified for the Club World Cup, the equivalent in Super Rugby Pacific and the highest ranked from the Challenge Cup group stage.

It remains to be seen where these two new competitions would take place. Monday, the Dailymail evoked a strong interest from Qatar to host the finals of the future League of Nations, the first edition of which, planned for 2026, would bring together the countries of the 6 Nations Tournament, the Rugby Championship and two guests (a priori Japan and Fiji) . To obtain this right, the gas state of the Middle East would be willing to put almost a billion euros on the table?

A Club World Cup, but where?

Would he go so far as to be so generous with this Club World Cup and its little sister? The advantage both geographically and in terms of exposure of organizing these competitions in this area of ​​the globe, halfway between the teams from the South and the North, would however come up against the biological obstacle that would be imposed by meetings sports on a land where the thermometer exceeds 40 degrees at this time of the year.

A reality that all the money in the world, unless we consider ecologically aberrant and inaudible options, cannot change for the moment.

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