The Arsenal board could be making a decision that will not go down at all well with manager Mikel Arteta.
Off the back of steering the Gunners to successive 2nd-place Premier League finishes, Arteta is perhaps Arsenal’s most prized asset at the moment.
That is saying something for a side who have the likes of Bukayo Saka and Declan Rice on the books.
The Spaniard has enjoyed a strong relationship with the top brass in his five years at the Emirates.
They backed him when some suggested Arsenal should move in a different direction in the early stage of his premiership.
But the board appear to be endorsing a controversial proposal that the Pep Guardiola protégé surely would not support.
If it comes to fruition, it could have a seismic impact on Arsenal and football’s wider ecosystem.
Arsenal back controversial Club World Cup proposal
As reported by The Sun, Arsenal and their peers in the so-called ‘Big Six’ are actively supporting FIFA’s plans for an expanded Club World Cup.
It’s easy to see why it has the backing of big clubs. It could be worth up to £85m each in prize money.
Until now, the Club World Cup has been a relatively compact tournament. European clubs could expect to play, at most, two matches at the event.
But from 2025, the tournament will expand to 32 teams and become a quadrennial event, with the European champions from the last four seasons qualifying.
UEFA will send 12 teams to the tournament in total, with the remaining eight based on clubs’ performance in UEFA competition over the previous four years.
There is, therefore, a good chance that while they will not play in the 2025 iteration, Arsenal could feature in future editions.
Significantly, the tournament does not have the blessing of Premier League CEO Richard Masters.
And this believed to have caused consternation in the boardrooms of Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea, Liverpool and the two Manchester clubs.
Arteta would hate bloated Club World Cup format
Given his attitude towards the already crowded fixture schedule, it would be a shock if the Club World Cup was backed by the Arsenal manager.
As quoted by The Guardian barely a month ago, Arteta said: *“It \[the fixture schedule\] is not right\. *
“If you look in any angle it’s not right. If you want to protect, let’s talk about the players and the protagonists.
“Let’s protect the players and do everything we can to give them the maximum time to help them recover and perform and do the show that they do every week.”
Adding a further seven matches that bloated schedule would only exacerbate the issues which Arteta has consistently raised.