Boca Juniors fans get ready for the Club World Cup with chants and drums on Miami beach. (2:07)Open Extended ReactionsFans from over 130 countries have purchased nearly 1.5 million tickets for the Club World Cup that kicked off last weekend in its newly expanded format across the United States, FIFA said on Tuesday. "This is exactly what the FIFA Club World Cup was created for: a world-class stage where new stories are told, new heroes emerge, and club football fans feel part of something bigger," FIFA President Gianni Infantino said in a statement. Concerns for how the Club World Cup would be received had been rampant, however, after a lacklustre Copa America in 2024 that played out on sub-par pitches to occasionally half-empty stadiums and ended with a fan security fiasco at the final in Miami. LaLiga president Javier Tebas has called the Club World Cup "absurd" and added on Tuesday that it needs to be "eliminated" from FIFA's competition schedule.