There was no need for a lap of honour. As the fireworks that had caused a power cut stopped and the realisation Chelsea had become world champions began to set in, the players realised all but two small areas of the Mohammed Bin Zayed stadium were empty.
An estimated 500 fans had made the trip from London with a slightly larger congregation travelling from India and other parts of Asia to see their team play. So the players went off to both pockets of fans, separated by thousands of seats vacated by the Palmeiras supporters who had travelled in far greater numbers.
It was a fittingly unusual end to an unusual week in the desert.
On day one Chelsea’s staff felt there was a risk of it feeling like a pre-season camp so technical adviser Petr Cech, who lost the 2012 final, made a point of stressing the competition’s importance.
To minimise the coronavirus risk, with fears of a positive test meaning 10 days' hotel quarantine, the travelling party was not allowed to leave their Ritz Carlton base aside from getting on the coach to the stadium and four players attending prayers at the nearby Grand Mosque on Friday.
In a post-pandemic world they would unlikely have done much sightseeing anyway in a city hardly renowned for its sights of cultural significance. Yet such trips are something the big clubs should start getting used to, for this part of the world has now undeniably become FIFA's home away from home.
This was the Club World Cup’s fifth time in Abu Dhabi since 2009 at the start of a year in which the game's power will have shifted inexorably to the Gulf through Qatar's hosting of the World Cup and Saudi Arabia's arrival to prominence via Newcastle United and a deal with the Spanish FA.
The countries’ motivation is obvious. As the demand for oil decreases the region is having to diversify its wealth. And sport, but predominantly football, is being viewed as the ideal receptive industry.
The geopolitical dynamics remain complicated but FIFA thinks of itself – and the game – as capable of bringing the world together. Critics can simply point out that Russia hosted the World Cup less than four years ago but one curious detail to notice during Chelsea’s games at the Mohammed Bin Zayed stadium there were adverts for Qatar Airways plastered across the pitch perimeter. Diplomatic relations between the countries were only tentatively restored a couple of months ago and it is hard to think of many other instances where such promotion would be allowed.
Abu Dhabi itself is a perplexing place. The skyline looks impressive, the hotels are luxurious but beyond that there is something a little empty about it all, a place that seems to exist only for the benefit of big business with the servicing of that more than problematic.
In a country where an estimated 90% of the population are migrants, the continued enforcement of the kafala system is a thorny issue and while there has been more intense focus on the human rights issues in Saudi Arabia and Qatar some activists consider the UAE to be even more problematic.
“Despite outward appearances, the UAE is arguably the most authoritarian of all GCC [Gulf cooperation council] states,” Hiba Zayadin of Human Rights Watch tells football.london. “UAE authorities have carried out a sustained assault on freedom of expression and association since 2011.”
Another problem Zayadin points to is the country’s surveillance of seemingly everything, with even visiting football journalists warned of their communication being monitored while in the emirate last week.
“Over the past several years, it has also invested considerably in advancing its already extensive cybersurveillance capabilities, which it uses to target leading human rights activists, foreign journalists and even world leaders,” Zayadin adds. “And it's not just public speech that can get one prosecuted anymore, it's also what one says in private on email and chatting apps.
“And it's not just dissidents or critics who suffer as a result of the UAE’s fundamental lack of respect for the rule of law, its powerful state security apparatus and its use of sophisticated spyware. This repressive system also ensnares expat businesspersons, families of dissidents and even British football fans.”
Its domestic football culture, despite the United Arab Emirates reaching the 1990 World Cup, barely has a pulse and it is unclear how it can grow when the permanent population is so small.
“Football is one of the pillars of the UAE’s soft power and serves to promote cooperation and friendship among countries and peoples," the captain of that team, Abdulrahman Mohammed, told Esquire magazine's Middle East edition last year. "Such importance is what encouraged the UAE leadership to passionately support its athletes and coaches by establishing facilities to help develop their skills and achieve their ambitions."
Zayadin views the approach, most recently outlined in the 2017 Soft Power strategy, differently. “Sport is a big part of that whitewashing strategy and because it coupled this strategy with a near complete closing down of any public space for criticism, the UAE has largely succeeded at avoiding scrutiny of its human rights record outside of the human rights community,” she says.
The facilities, sprawling across the city, are undoubtedly impressive and that soft power has certainly left a mark on the Premier League. Except Manchester City have near-zero visible presence on the streets of the emirate. There are no billboards with Pep Guardiola and some of the sports outlets in the heart of the city sell plenty of Barcelona and Real Madrid gear but none belonging to their key sporting asset.
A non-football fan could easily spend a week in town and not realise that it is the control centre for such a powerful group of clubs, and save for the thousands of fervent Palmeiras fans in town there was little hint of a supposed major tournament taking place this past week. It was possible to buy tickets costing the equivalent of £4 right up to kick off on Saturday and the attendance would have been pithy if it were not for South America’s fascination with the competition.
There remains much talk in England, and other parts of Europe, around how much the Club World Cup matters - but for FIFA it is also now a crucial vehicle when it comes to their own power battle with UEFA.
Gianni Infantino has made no secret of his desire to expand it into a 24-team tournament with eight representatives coming from Europe. His vision was to play this year’s tournament in China, believing it to be another market possessing huge growth potential, and $25billion (£18.5billion) funding had been sourced from SoftBank, a Japanese conglomerate, in 2018 to make it a yearly event.
Considering the current standoff with UEFA, who along with CONMEBOL have organised an intercontinental final for June 1 between Italy and Argentina dubbed “finalissima” in response to the biennial World Cup plans, it is impossible not to deduce that it would have taken on the role of a global Super League that would see the world's richest clubs get even richer.
The difference to a European Super League, however, would be that Infantino’s lasts a couple of weeks rather than most of a domestic season with a format similar to international tournaments.
Well-sourced reports indicate Infantino has told Florentino Perez, the Real president, that participating would be worth £150million and only the pandemic has stopped it becoming a reality. The plan could still come to fruition but a timeline of its rejuvenation is unclear.
Its future will not have mattered to Chelsea as they returned home early yesterday morning. The end result, if not the performance, went to plan and considering Chelsea’s pursuit of trophies is unlikely to slow down maybe this environment will become familiar.
Football’s powerbrokers, after all, have made the Gulf their home away from home. The money available appears limitless, the facilities are good. The absence of footballing culture and the rights of workers who waited the tables of visitors or drove them from one venue to another does not seem to matter.
