Background
The 2005 tournament was created as a merger between the Intercontinental Cup and the earlier FIFA Club World Championships. The previous of these had been running as an annual tournament between the champions of Europe and South America since 1960; the latter had undergone just one tournament, the 2000 FIFA Club World Championship. The 2001 tournament had been cancelled when FIFA's marketing partner ISL went bankrupt. To celebrate the marriage between the two competitions, a new trophy was introduced by FIFA.
As a result of this merger, the tournament was conceived as being smaller than the original Club World Championship, which had lasted two weeks, yet building on the one game format of the Intercontinental Cup. Six clubs were invited to take part in the tournament, one representing each regional football confederation. The competition's name, which was the simple union between the name of the two previous merging competitions, was evidently too long, and was going to be reduced the following year, becoming the FIFA Club World Cup.
Read more about this topic: 2005 FIFA Club World Championship
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