Club World Cup has so many winners on show, but will fans be long-term losers?

Mbappe will be just one of 26 players to have won the more established World Cup.

Then you can add historical clubs like Palmeiras, Flamengo, River Plate, Boca Juniors, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Inter Milan, Benfica, Juventus and err... Al-Hilal. Well, the Saudis are paying for this.

Chelsea and Manchester City are England’s representatives.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino even shamelessly gossiped about Cristiano Ronaldo signing for one of the participants to go head to head with Lionel Messi once more. He did not. Maybe it helped low ticket sales.

People are doubting the value of this new tournament, but English football thought the (proper) World Cup and European Cups were bad ideas when they began, and Nations League naysayers have had their argument damaged by the football.

But the sport needs the expansion of this 25-year-old tournament like a hole in the head. Not now, not in this convoluted format.

For any new tournament to be a force for good in a football calendar so overcrowded as to be verging on dangerous, something has to give. In the power struggle between UEFA and FIFA, nothing ever does.

So after UEFA expanded its European Championship and more recently Champions League, Europa League and Conference League, FIFA pumped up its World Cup and Club World Cup – to 32 teams playing up to seven games in what for players whose leagues run through the European winter should be a summer of recharging ahead of the big international jamboree.

Its effect will be felt in 2025-26, draining the energy of players in the Premier League, Champions League and FIFA's World Cup.

Even if we see the best of any of those wonderful young talents, none can come close to 40-year-old Ronaldo's amazing longevity going to the well so often.

FIFA's determination to weaponise its tournament against UEFA, plus Saudi Arabia's appetite for sportswashing equals $1bn (£860m) prize money that as well as further distorting club football, the sides involved cannot say no to.

The players are simply not allowed to – not just by their employers but the world governing body supposed to be looking after them.

More players will burn out as Jack Grealish has and Phil Foden potentially is doing; more bodies will break down like Kalvin Phillips' and John Stones'; there will be more serious injuries like Rodri's.

All are members of a Manchester City squad kept deliberately small by Pep Guardiola, a squad which goes the distance in most club competitions. All have played for their country in major tournament finals too.

It is very obvious what is happening and FIFA do not care.

Players expected to peak at the end of domestic seasons in May, and/or the European Cup final two weeks ago, and/or the Nations League final last week will be expected to turn on the magic again in oppressive summer heat.

Even fans are suffering overkill. The tournament overlaps with the CONCACAF Gold Cup (North/Central America’s Euros), which is also in the USA, which co-hosts the next World Cup. Pockets are only so deep.

This week there were reports of sections of the ground being closed for the opening game, featuring Inter Miami's Messi in their home stadium, due to tens of thousands of seats unsold, of local students being offered five tickets for £17, and dynamic pricing forcing prices for the general public down from £257 in December to £50 – the Reverse Oasis Effect, some might say.

Even the television rights were a hard sell, DAZN bravely fighting off no competition to pay $1bn for the global rights shortly after 2034 World Cup hosts Saudi Arabia put $1bn into the broadcaster. Channel 5 then bought 23 games off them.

Incidentally, Messi’s no-time American champions Miami spuriously qualified as Supporters Shield winners – top of the regular-season league in a competition where the play-off winners are the champions. When you pick teams to play in $1bn tournaments on the basis of favouritism, not football, there are words for that – words FIFA has glued itself to, not prised off, since evicting Sepp Blatter and his corrupt cronies.

Even world events are moving against the competition.

Not that FIFA blinks an eye about visiting authoritarian regimes, but with Donald Trump's administration so hostile to non-Americans, its heavy-handed treatment of immigrants has made host venue Los Angeles a war zone.

Hopefully the tournament rises above it all. Hopefully Inter Milan find the energy that left them in May’s Champions League final, and Paris Saint-German keep theirs. Hopefully non-European clubs showcase new talent, and prove better than they are given credit for.

Judging by the flurry of transfers, the clubs are taking it seriously. Ego – in a healthy sporting way – seems to be driving that as well as money.

But whatever happens, it will come at the cost of shortening the careers of the star players. That way we all lose.