Five foolproof ideas for FIFA to make the Club World Cup more exciting and relevant

Since its establishment in 2000, only two sides from outside Europe and South America have even managed to progress to the final.

And that seems certain to happen against his year: Real Madrid's path into the final in Morocco was secured after a 4-0 win over Cruz Azul on Tuesday, as close to a foregone conclusion as is possible in professional football, while Argentina's San Lorenzo seem similarly certain to beat Auckland City on Wednesday night.

Rather than just grumble, we decided to ask ourselves what can be done? Here are five ways FIFA could make the Club World Cup more exciting, competitive, relevant and entertaining:

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First idea is simple. Scrap the idea of a Club World Cup and make it a Leagues World Cup. Just imagine a Liga XI up against a Bundesliga XI, or a Brazilian XI versus a Serie A XI. Absolutely mouthwatering.

The smaller leagues can still be shoved in together - and on the basis of the World Cup, a Central American XI would have every chance of taking on and beating even a top European side. Eight select sides ought to do the trick.

And best of all, we'd finally get to see Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo lining up on the same team...

A meagre sum of €4m is on offer to the winners of the Club World Cup. In comparison, Real Madrid made around €57.4 million from their Champions League-winning campaign last season. FIFA, who have cash reserves in the region of well over €1bn, could easily offer a larger incentive - say, €4m just for taking part and ten times that to the winner - to the participants and an even bigger reason to inject money around the world's domestic leagues.

Could you imagine if a team from New Zealand or Mozambique won that amount? It would change the landscape of their domestic league and put more money back into the game back home.

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Europe is the dominant football continent with the biggest financial firepower. Millions of fans around the world love to watch these sides, who boast the lion's share of the world's top players.

Yet the entire continent provides just a single team for the Club World Cup. It's absurd to suggest that a minimum of four European sides shouldn't have the right to fight it out for the title of World's Best Club side, so why not simply parachute all four Champions League semi-finalists into the tournament? Or even better, the last eight?

Then invite all four Copa Libertadores semi-finalists, two from CONCACAF, then finally throw in the best sides from the rest of the world - two from Asia, one each from Africa and Oceania - and you have a perfect 18-side tournament.

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I know. Terrible, right? But at the moment the tournament falls down because plenty of sides who would generate big interest never make it into the event itself.

Take the MLS for example - the likes of Jermain Defoe, Clint Dempsey, David Villa and Michael Bradley are all established names strutting their stuff in America, which means they will gauge interest among the watching public. That's just the start: Kaka, Robinho and Frank Lampard will be arriving soon and teams backed by Manchester City and David Beckham will start to make an impact within the next few years.

Yet all three MLS teams who made it through went out of the CONCACAF Champions League at the quarter-final stage this year, ruining US fans' interest in the tournament as they were beaten by Mexican sides. It's time to put sporting purity aside - just as UEFA did when they turned the European Cup into the absurdly-title but absurdly good Champions League - and fiddle the draw to give people what they want. And that means easing the passage for at least one MLS side, and at least one Chinese side, into the tournament.

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Prestige is key in football and this is something the Club World Cup currently lacks. Surely a competition which can potentially define your side as the best in the world deserves more coverage than it currently gets?

"The focus of the football world will fall on Morocco between 10 and 20 December this year", says the FIFA website, but this statement is clearly far from the truth. Fans are into the Champions League and domestic leagues and cups, and the Club World Cup is an irrelevance.

That would change with more, better teams - but it also needs its own slot, away from the rest of the footballing calendar. Why not make it a biennial event, and play it at the end of the European season, in late May or early June - let the event take centre stage, allowing the Euros and World Cup to shine in separate years. Bigger, better, less often is a great plan for the World Cup - and so it would be for the Club World Cup.

Will any of this ever happen? Under the reigns of FIFA it seems unlikely, but the resources are there and if teams genuinely want to be considered as the 'Best in the world', a change in philosophy of the Club World Cup needs to happen sooner rather than later.