Ancelotti claims Real will not play in Club World Cup

Real Madrid will not participate in next year's expanded Club World Cup, their manager Carlo Ancelotti has claimed.

The Champions League and La Liga champions have already qualified for the 32-team Fifa tournament to be held in the USA between 15 June and 13 July 2025.

"FIFA can forget it, footballers and clubs will not participate in that tournament," Ancelotti, 65, told Italian newspaper Il Giornale., external

The Italian added: "A single Real Madrid match is worth 20 million and Fifa wants to give us that amount for the whole cup. Negative. Like us, other clubs will refuse the invitation."

BBC Sport has contacted Real and Fifa for comment.

Real, who won the Champions League earlier this month, are among 12 European teams who are due to participate in the tournament including Premier League sides Manchester City and Chelsea.

The European Club Association (ECA) is distancing itself from Ancelotti's remarks.

Of the 12 qualified teams, only Real are not in the ECA, while Juventus are set to rejoin the organisation after withdrawing from the European Super League plans.

Real and Barcelona are the two remaining founding members from the Super League project which collapsed shortly after it was launched in 2021.

ECA sources say the organisation and its clubs are committed to the Club World Cup.

Ancelotti's figure of 20m euros is privately being questioned as many commercial and TV deals for the event remain to be agreed.

Last month. Fifa rejected claims that world players' union Fifpro and the World Leagues Association (WLA), which includes the Premier League, were not consulted over plans.

Fifpro and the WLA called on Fifa to reschedule the tournament amid a threat of legal action.

Premier League chief executive Richard Masters has previously said the football calendar is "getting to a tipping point" with the amount of matches that teams are being asked to play.

Fifa president Gianni Infantino last month said he hoped Fifpro and the WLA would stop this "futile debate".

"Even with the new Club World Cup of Fifa with 32 teams and 63 matches every four years, Fifa is organising around 1% of the games of the top clubs in the world," he said.

"All other matches, 98, 99%, are organised by the different leagues, associations, confederations, by all of you - and that's good.

"But here comes the thing - the one or two per cent of matches that Fifa organises is financing football all over the world."

Real will almost certainly be prevented from participating in their normal lucrative pre-season tour as their players would be entitled to time off after the CWC. This summer, they have high-profile matches against Barcelona, AC Milan and Chelsea in the United States as part of the '2024 Champions Tour' event.

Source: BBC