CAN THE CLUB WORLD CUP EVER FULFIL ITS BILLING?
It was played amid a pandemic, so the echoing stands of the Education City Stadium in Al-Rayyan, Qatar, had an excuse.
It was also a half-baked final of the 2020 FIFA Club World Cup, with Bayern Munich winning deservedly but unspectacularly, 1-0 against Tigres UANL.
Bayern matched Barcelona in completing a clean sweep of trophies in 2020 - domestic cup, league and super cup, continental cup, super cup and world club cup, but the day afterwards, the match was football news item 22 on the BBC's website.
Few fans were talking about it after the event.
Who is the best national team in the world? France, because they won the World Cup in 2018. But who is the best club side in the world?
Bayern probably, because they are the reigning holders of the FIFA Club World Cup but it is harder to be sure as there is still something unsatisfying about the yearly event, played out in mid-season to tranquil crowds in the Middle or Far East.
Despite FIFA's best efforts, the Club World Cup is just still a way from becoming the premier event it is on paper.
So will it ever turn into the World Cup of club football?
FIFA have been planning a larger event for a while but it has yet to happen.
The idea was for world football's governing body to replace their modestly popular but ultimately inconsequential Confederations Cup, which was last played in 2017 and allow them to tap into the popularity of the club game.
The impressive growth of UEFA's Champions League has not gone unnoticed on the other, German-speaking side of Switzerland, in Zurich where FIFA resides.
So in 2016 Gianni Infantino announced the World Club Cup was expanding from six to 32 teams and the new format would begin in the summer of 2019.
A tournament that size seemed extremely ambitious and so the plan was swiftly slimmed down the following year to a four-yearly event for 24 clubs, the first of which would kick off in the summer of 2021.
Two years later and the FIFA Council confirmed China would be the inaugural host nation with eight cities across the country holding matches.
Even if 32 teams was a leap too far, to expand from seven to 24 teams, the size of the World Cup from 1982-1994, was a big enough one.
The format for China 2021 had the following confederation allocations:
UEFA - 8 clubs, CONMEBOL - 6 clubs, CAF & CONCACAF - 3 clubs each, AFC - 2.5 clubs Oceania - 0.5 clubs and one club from the host nation, making 24 in total.
There was only one problem - the clubs themselves. The prospect of a huge tournament at the end of an already fixture-congested calendar filled many with horror. It seemed yet another hair-brained idea from football's fiction factories in Switzerland.
It has been widely noted Palmeiras were playing their 70th game this season when they took the field against Tigres in Al-Rayyan. They had played ten times in January alone before jetting off to the Middle East, five days after a match in sweltering Brazil.
Bayern by comparison played 52 matches in their clean-sweep season of 2019-'20, Barcelona 62 a decade earlier.
So if there is to be a World Cup-sized tournament then the top clubs will have to reduce their schedule somehow because a 24 team tournament would add seven more matches to the finalists' seasons.
The European Club Association which represents the top teams expressed its firm opposition in 2019 to a revamped Club World Cup. It issued a letter saying it was "firmly against" FIFA's proposal and that "no ECA clubs would take part."
Then in 2020 along came Covid-19, throwing the best-laid plans up in the air across the globe.
The Club World Cup is of course the descendent of the old Intercontinental Cup competition, where the European and South American champions had squared off since 1960, not always happily.
On-field thuggery plagued the competition in the late 1960s. Six players saw red when Celtic played Racing Club in 1967 but the second leg of the 1969 final between Milan and Estudiantes has gone down in history as one of the most fiery matches of all time.
Milan were met by missiles as they took the field and cut short their warm up. Striker Pierino Prati was headbutted unconscious, Gianni Rivera was punched in the face and several were spat at and kicked.
Néstor Combin, Milan's Argentine-born French international was stretchered off with a bloody nose after being elbowed and kicked in the face and to add insult to injury, was thrown into jail after the match, accused of draft-dodging.
Entente cordiale it was not, although FIFA washed their hands, dismissing it as "a European-South American friendly match" they had no jurisdiction over, with no hint of irony.
Nevertheless, they proposed an expanded Club World Cup as early as 1970, while England's Football Association and French daily l'Équipe also tried to get international club tournaments off the ground.
European champions regularly opted out in the seventies - Ajax and Liverpool twice, Bayern and Nottingham Forest once, diminishing its prestige and effectively labelling it as a novelty event or even a friendly match.
Only in 2000 with the birth of the FIFA Club World Cup did the sport's ultimate governing body truly take control of the concept and make it their own.
Until 1980 the European and South American champions played a two-legged final home and away. Were that format to be revived for the finalists, there would be a lot more interest generated than by playing a one-off match in neutral Qatar or Japan.
But it is an unlikely prospect. Adding all of FIFA's confederation club champions to those of Europe and South America has been as beneficial as expanding the World Cup beyond football's traditional heartlands.
Just as countries like Cameroon and South Korea have shone in the World Cup, five out of the last eleven Club World Cup finals have featured sides from outside of CONMEBOL and UEFA - TP Mazembe, Raja Casablanca, Kashima Antlers, Al-Ain and Tigres.
The fact those sides all lost to European opposition seems to show that CONMEBOL is on the wane. Palmeiras' semi-final loss to Tigres was only the latest setback.
Corinthians' 1-0 win over Chelsea in 2012 is the only South American victory in the last 14 years. The times they are a-changing.
So with Covid refusing to let go and Qatar 2022 the major job on their horizon, FIFA's dream of a global club competition to match the one for their national teams will just have to wait.
China 2021 has now been put back to summer 2022 at the earliest with 2023 a more likely date, if the big clubs can be persuaded.
As a result, Japan will host the next edition with seven teams in December of 2021, the format unchanged from this year's edition in Qatar. Six teams flew to Doha, because Oceania's Auckland City had nobly withdrawn due to Covid restrictions.
Beyond that who knows what will happen. To ape the national tournaments it would have to expand into at least a 12-club competition like the 2019 Copa America.
Some expansion seems inevitable but whether Infantino will get his dream of a big summer tournament to mirror the World Cup remains moot.
Previous Club World Cup News
Real Madrid won the 2016 World Club though Kashima players claim the referee was in awe of their illustrious opponents.
Kashima Antlers gave Real Madrid a scare in the final of the Club World Cup losing 4-2 to a Cristiano Ronaldo hat trick after leading 2-1.
The Club World Cup 2016 in Japan should see a final of Real Madrid v Atlético Nacional in Yokohama.
Sanfrecce Hiroshima finish third In Club World Cup 2015 as Barcelona beat River Plate 3-0 in Yokohama.
Club World Cup 2012 - Chelsea and Corinthians are expected to meet in the final.
Club World Cup 2011 - Barca and Santos are the favorites.
World Club Cup 2010 - won by Italy's Inter.
World Club Cup 2009 - won by Barcelona.
World Club Cup 2008 - won by Manchester United.
World Club Cup Preview - all the club profile, players and coaches.
World Club Cup Review - the tournament reviewed.
World Club Cup 2007 - won by AC Milan.
World Club Cup 2006 - won by Internacional.
World Club Cup 2005 - won by Sao Paolo.
Buy tickets for soccer matches around the world