FIFA Chief of Global Football Development Arsène Wenger has said that the FIFA Club World Cup 25™ will help strengthen clubs around the world and give those outside Europe a greater role in developing and educating players.

This summer's competition will see 32 of the best teams on the planet converge on the United States between 14 June and 13 July in the most inclusive global club tournament ever played. FIFA has set aside a prize money pot of USD 1 billion to be distributed to the participants, with clubs across the world also benefitting via solidarity payments.

"We want to have strong clubs everywhere in the world," Mr Wenger told the European Club Association (ECA) Connect event in Madrid, Spain. “Let’s not forget that the clubs are responsible for the development of the players.

"Today, everybody, every talent in the world, who was born and has some football talent, wants to come to Europe. Why? Because in their own country, there is no chance to play at a good level. So you would think that if we can create strong units everywhere in the world, they will take charge of developing more good players and developing football inside their country," he said.

"The (FIFA) Club World Cup involving the whole (world) is a good thing for me."

Mr Wenger also spoke about FIFA's Talent Development Programme which is now underway in more than 200 of FIFA's 211 Member Associations and aims to give every talented player an opportunity to be spotted, given the right coaching and a pathway to a career in the game.

He said that, after taking on the role with FIFA in November 2019, he realised that in most of the world, most children had no opportunities to play the game.

"We realised as well that the 20 best-ranked FIFA countries are the 20 countries with the best level of educational values. That means identification of talent, coaching programmes, quality of coaches, quality of the competitions did not exist in 70% of the world," he said.

"So we created a programme that is called ´Give every talent a chance in the world’, every girl, every boy. And we create academies all over the world. We go inside the countries, we identify the talent, we create an academy, we send our coaches that we educate to develop football all over the world."

FIFA has already established 28 Talent Academies globally with dedicated coaches to provide best-practice training environments for young players of all genders.

One of the most important aspects of coaching, Mr Wenger said, was to allow players’ creativity to flourish.

“I would say that in the last 20 years, the freedom of the players has been reduced. The importance of the structure has been emphasised a lot,” he said.

“I think sometimes that the players play more to respond to what they have been told do (rather) than to express themselves and their freedom. And too many norms kill creativity. That’s why, certainly, coaching, to educate the coaches again, is very important because we all love the game to see things we don’t expect to see. We all love the game because we like the element of surprise. When a player does something that you don’t expect.

"We have to create unpredictability again and players who have their own personality. To develop their personality at a young age and develop their creativity. This is an important element that we have to take care of.”