List of world champion football clubs


This list includes the official ' world champion football clubs''' recognized by FIFA.
The official competitions that grant this title are the extinct Intercontinental Cup and, in 2000 and since 2005, the FIFA Club World Cup.

Competitions

FIFA Club World Cup

The FIFA Club World Cup is an international men's association football competition organised by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, the sport's global governing body. The tournament officially assigns the world title. The competition was first contested in 2000 as the FIFA Club World Championship. It was not held between 2001 and 2004 due to a combination of factors, most importantly the collapse of FIFA's marketing partner International Sport and Leisure. Since 2005, the competition has been held every year, and has been hosted by Brazil, Japan, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco. The FIFA Club World Cup's prestige is perceived quite differently in different parts of the football world; while it is widely regarded as the most distinguished club level trophy in South America, it struggles to attract interest in most of Europe compared to the UEFA Champions League and commonly lacks recognition as a high-ranking contest.
The first FIFA Club World Championship took place in Brazil in 2000. It ran in parallel with the Intercontinental Cup, a competition organised jointly by the Union of European Football Associations and the Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol first disputed in 1960 by the winners of the European Champions' Cup and the Copa Libertadores. In 2005, after the Intercontinental Cup's last edition, that competition was merged with the FIFA Club World Cup's first edition and renamed the "FIFA Club World Championship". In 2006, the tournament took its current name. As required by the regulations, a representative from FIFA present the winner of the World Cup with the FIFA Club World Cup trophy and with a FIFA World Champions certificate.
The current format of the tournament involves seven teams competing for the title at venues within the host nation over a period of about two weeks; the winners of that year's AFC Champions League, CAF Champions League, CONCACAF Champions League, Copa Libertadores, OFC Champions League and UEFA Champions League, along with the host nation's national champions, participate in a straight knock-out tournament. The host nation's national champions dispute a play-off against the Oceania champions, from which the winner joins the champions of Asia, Africa and North America at the quarter-finals. The quarter-final winners go on to face the European and South American champions, who enter at the semi-final stage, for a place in the final. In Europe the tournament is almost ignored by the mass media, also because of its sporting level, considered inferior to the Intercontinental Cup, indeed when the sides used to meet in a one-off game in Japan , this was still a fair fight. The opening up of the global market in football has changed the balance. These days the best South Americans are usually playing for the Europeans.

Intercontinental Cup

The Intercontinental Cup, also known as European/South American Cup, was an official international football competition endorsed by the Union of European Football Associations and the Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol, contested between representative clubs from these confederations, usually the winners of the European Champions' Cup, and the South American Copa Libertadores. The competition was played by representatives clubs of most developed continents in the football world; has since been replaced by the FIFA Club World Cup. All editions were official competitions UEFA and CONMEBOL and indirectly also of FIFA.
From its formation in 1960 to 1979, the competition was contested over a two legged tie, with a playoff if necessary until 1968, and penalty kicks later. During the 1970s, European participation in the Intercontinental Cup became a running question due to controversial events in the 1969 final, and some European Champions Club' winner teams withdrew. From 1980 until 2004, the competition was contested over a single match held in Japan and sponsored by multinational automaker Toyota, which offered a secondary trophy, the Toyota Cup.
Throughout the history of football, various attempts have been made to organize a tournament that identifies "the best club team in the world" – such as the Football World Championship, the Lipton Trophy, the Copa Rio, Pequeña Copa del Mundo but also the Mundialito de Clubs - due to FIFA's lack of interest or inability to organize club competitions, – the Intercontinental Cup is considered by FIFA as the official predecessor to the FIFA Club World Cup, which was held for the first time in 2000.
All the winning teams were regarded by worldwide mass media and the football community, FIFA included, as "world champions" de facto. On 27 October 2017 FIFA Council, while not promoting statistical unification with the current World Cup, in respect to the history of the two tournaments has officilised the world title and recognized all winners as official club world champions with the same status as FIFA Club World Cup winners. FIFA changing only the conferred title, also because for the FIFA Statute, the Intercontinental Cup was already an official competition unlike, for example, the King Fahd Cup which became the FIFA Confederations Cup.
As it happened, for example, for the statistics of the Brazilian Championship, there was the unification of the titles of champions differentiating the competitions, organized by different federations, in the list of winners issued by the main federation, the CBF.Another similar case is that of the Argentine champions. Over the years seven different federations have organized the championship, the Argentine Football Association, that is the current Argentine federation, recognizes all titles as official. Even in Europe, precisely in Italy, there has been another noteworthy case. The FIGC, the current Italian federation, recognizes as official the national championship organized by CCI and won by Pro Vercelli.

Winners

By club

In synthesis FIFA has two types of world champions, those deriving from the Intercontinental Cup and those deriving from the Club World Cup so in accordance to what is officially communicated by FIFA, the total count of official world titles is as follows:
;Key:
ICIntercontinental Cup
FCWCFIFA Club World Cup

By country

Winners by country.
CountryICFCWCTotal
4711
6410
909
729
606
314
303
123
202
101
1101

1 = Includes Yugoslavia records.

By confederation

All-time runners-up without title

;Key:
ICIntercontinental Cup
FCWCFIFA Club World Cup