The Mexican club Club León around James Rodríguez remains excluded from the tournament this summer.
The eight-time Mexican football champion Club León has finally been excluded by the club World Cup this summer. The association failed with its objection to a corresponding decision by the World Association FIFA in front of the International Sports Court CAS.
As the committee announced after checking the documents on Tuesday, the exclusion is right. In March the FIFA León Appeal Commission excluded because the club around the former Munich James Rodríguez does not meet “the criteria for possession of several football clubs”. Club León has the same owner as CF Pachuca in José de Jesús Martínez Patino, who is also qualified for the tournament.
The club World Cup enlarged to 32 teams is to be held for the first time in the summer in the USA (June 14 to July 13). As FIFA President Gianni Infantino had recently confirmed, the free starting place for the tournament, in which FC Bayern and Borussia Dortmund will also take part, is to be re-awarded in a decision-making game between Los Angeles FC and the Mexican record champion Club América.
León was originally drawn to Group D and thus, among other things, the Chelsea FC. In a message, the association condemned the exclusion. The verdict was “very hard”, it said in a statement on the platform X. In this case, “from the beginning there was no sporting principle”.