By Freddy Powys
The current Palmeiras president, Leila Pereira, poses with the 2026 FIFA Club World Cup trophy (Photo: Palmeiras)
Palmeiras lost the 2025 Copa Libertadores final (the South American equivalent of the Champions League) last weekend, so now seems as good a time as any to revisit a well-worn phrase in any Brazilian football fan’s vernacular: “Palmeiras não tem mundial“.
The “mundial“ in question is the FIFA Club World Cup, which has been running officially since 2000, and pits the champions of each continental footballing body against each other, to determine who will be “world champion” each season.
The Libertadores winners from South America typically go up against the Champions League winners from Europe, and teams from Africa, Asia, North America and the Middle East make up the numbers. This year the tournament was expanded and took on a similar format the FIFA World Cup, so Palmeiras will likely take part in next year’s edition, despite losing the Libertadores final to Rio de Janeiro’s Flamengo.
Palmeiras’ rivals from across town, São Paulo FC and Corinthians, have both won the Cup in recent history (in 2005, and 2000 & 2013 respectively), but Palmeiras haven’t – hence the mocking refrain of “Palmeiras não tem mundial“ (“Palmeiras doesn’t have a mundial”). They have, however, won the Intercontinental Cup, which took place in Rio in 1951 along similar lines.
So Palmeiras does have a tenuous claim to the title of World Champions, albeit one that is not officially recognised by FIFA, who only consider the post-2000 champions to be canon (FIFA dismissed the 1951 tournament as “outside their jurisdiction” but didn’t shut it down, which some interpret as tacit approval).
A close-up of the trophy Palmeiras won in 1951 (Photo: Archive)
This technicality has led to a fierce debate among fans, spawned countless memes, and is the focus of much derision and pedantry judging by my weekly football outings and the corresponding Whatsapp group, which is made up mainly of Corinthians and Palmeiras fans and can get very heated. It is often used as a one-size-fits-all rebuttal whenever any of the many Palmeiras fans get too big for their boots, but this tactic often triggers yet more relitigating of whether or not Palmeiras were ever world champions.
It took me a long time to grasp the extent of this rift, mainly because no one in Europe really cares about the Club World Cup, typically viewing it as a series of glorified friendlies, and a money-spinning exercise which often distracts teams from more important goals back home (especially in its new, watered-down format).
Chelsea are the current “world champions”, but winning the Champions League or the Premier League would mean a lot more to their fans. Whereas for Latin American teams, the Cup is the only opportunity to play the more prestigious teams from Europe in a competitive setting, so victory is considered the ultimate achievement.
Despite my family ties to Corinthians, I’ll be secretly rooting for Palmeiras in next year’s tournament. But even if they win, will the spectre of “Palmeiras não tem mundial“ truly be banished forever, so we can all move on with our lives? Of course not, football fans live for this kind of trivial debate. After all, Palmeiras did only scrape into the tournament on a technicality…