Granted, I would be more excited for this tournament if global footy schedules werent already so mashed together, so I am concerned over the quality of play, but I love the chance for other teams to try and prove their station in world club ball.

I watch the South American teams and know they can play. Mix in some of the strong Asian teams and you have an interesting tournament.

Here are the groups:

Group A: Palmeiras, Porto, Al Ahly, Inter Miami.

Group B: Paris Saint-Germain, Atletico Madrid, Botafogo, Seattle.

Group C: Bayern Munich, Auckland City, Boca Juniors, Benfica.

Group D: Flamengo, ES Tunis, Chelsea, Leon.

Group E: River Plate, Urawa, Monterrey, Inter Milan.

Group F: Fluminense, Borussia Dortmund, Ulsan, Mamelodi Sundowns.

Group G: Manchester City, Wydad, Al Ain, Juventus.

Group H: Real Madrid, Al-Hilal, Pachuca, Salzburg.

Obviously, we see the stand-out clubs and everyone will favor them. I am curious who your dark horse teams might be........

This party is clearly missing Ronaldo and his Al Nassr. It's a shame the Saudi club didn’t get something like a wild card...(

It would have been cool to see Messi, Ronaldo, and Neymar all involved. Messi's Inter Miami was super lucky in getting picked due to being the host nation.

Ofcourse they made it in a way where messi would get involved and proves again how much messi has had his hand held his whole career.

I dont understand how they selected the teams, it's weird seeing non UCL winners in this.

It would've been an improvement if they only allowed UCL winners to be in this.

Yeah, they clearly went out of their way to get Messi in on this, what do you want, he is the iconic last WC winner, so of course you'd like to get either him or Ronaldo to make publicity for the competition.

Indeed, if you are gonna do that, at least try to get Neymar and Ronaldo as well but guess they just couldn't find an excuse to squeeze them in.