So far, the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup had been such an obvious embarrassment.

A random assortment of clubs played, ranging from the second-biggest club in Auckland, New Zealand to Paris Saint-Germain, arguably the best club in world right now — and various “who dey”s in between. It seemed that the tournament was assembled as a vanity project for FIFA president Gianna Infantino.

So when I showed my 12-year old, soccer-obsessed son an article reporting that ticket prices for the semi-final had plummeted from almost $500 to $13, my point was: "Look how ridiculous this is."

His reaction was: "Can we go!?"

Not having anticipated this response, I had no clever reply and found myself buying three tickets. To my shock and delight, $13 included all Ticketmaster fees.

My son immediately bragged to his friends he was going to the Chelsea-Fluminense match, leading his best friend’s mom to buy two tickets for the same.

When she couldn’t get the time off, she was all too happy to eat the $13, because the semi-final between Chelsea, the English giant, and Fluminense, the sixth-best club in Brazil, was being held at 3 p.m. in early July in the Meadowlands. The heat index was 98.

FIFA is using this tournament as a dry-run for next year’s World Cup. If this is how they run it — next year’s World Cup is going to be an unmitigated disaster.

I got an email from FIFA telling me to arrive three hours early for a 3 p.m. game. Why? To mitigate traffic? To tailgate?

Camp and work schedules meant the earliest we could pull into the Secaucus train station was 1:30. The train from there got us to MetLife at 1:50.

We were met with the most intricate and ridiculous series of pedestrian fences I have ever encountered. I........

© The Leader