The competition proper starts today. I'll kick off by apologising for the lack of activity on here yesterday, but the jet lag hit me like a tidal wave, and I was unable to function for most of the day. Today, however, I'm fully recovered and able to post. again, I'm at The Olympic Stadium in Tokyo, and later on I'll be posting up my thoughts on this evening's semi-final between Ahly SC and SC Internacional later on. It is, I have to say, the match that I've been looking forward to the most. Two open, attacking sides, each with plenty of flair players. It promises to be a most absorbing evening.

With two semi-finals coming up, you might be forgiven for thinking that we're approaching some sort of climax here in Japan, but the truth of the matter is that things are only just warming up. With the fifth/sixth and third/fourth place play-offs to follow, we're not even a third of the way through the entire schedule and, in saying this, I'm hitting at the key issue in problems that FIFA have had with the selling of this tournament. At the moment, the World Club Cup is suffering from an image problem. It's kind of understandable, given that none of our teams are taking place, but the silence over this competition from the English press is deafening. The fact of the matter is that the World Club Cup is currently neither fish nor fowl. The set up, with six teams - one from each of the FIFA confederations - taking part is unsatisfactory. But I'm not here to be cynical. As I know that Sepp Blatter religiously reads this blog (who else could all those hits from Geneva be coming from?), I'm going to offer some of my patented brilliant advice on how to make the World Club Cup work.

Now, I don't think that I have to argue that football needs a World Club Championship. It needs it because there is a lot of fantastic football in the world. Europe may think it's the best, and it's certainly (in terms of revenue, if nothing else) the biggest, but that's not really enough, is it? I couldn't give two damns for these lists which show what clubs bring in the most money each year, and how much their overall turnover is. If this is all that matters, they might as well dispense with the football altogether, open up department stores and we can replace the league tables with the FTSE 100 Share Index. Where it counts is on the pitch. Football is a global game, and it needs a global tournament. We have the World Cup, of course, but most of us put our allegiance to our club team before our allegiance to our national team. Our club team is the bread and butter of our existence. We should have a global club tournament so that we can say with a degree of authority who is the best. We don't have that at the moment, because the tournament in it's current format doesn't carry the required weight. If Barcelona lose against Ahly SC or in the final, it won't be the end of their world. They'll return to Catalunya and resume their battle to become the champions of Europe again. The big European clubs have had a fairly dismal record in this competition since it started, so it needs to be changed to bring them onside.

The ideal World Club Cup needs to be played in the summer. There are, it seems to me, tournaments every summer at the moment, but there are still spaces in the calendar which it can be played. If we take it as read that the three big international competitions are the World Cup, the European Championships and the Copa America, then there is a spare summer that can be used. The tournament needs to be bigger. Sixteen teams should be sufficient - five from Europe, four from South America, two from Central and North America, two from Africa, two from Asia and one from Oceania. The tournament should be rotated around the world, rather than kept in one country. Much as I like Japan (and they are doing an excellent job of hosting this tournament), it makes sense for it to be played at times that are convenient for European television audiences. FIFA may need to take a small loss on it for a while too, in order to ensure that the potential earnings from it for the competing teams is high enough for them to sit up and take an interest.

There is no reason why this can't be a success. The world's appetite for football is insatiable. To say that the introduction of a World Club Cup is over-saturation is, frankly, hogwash - the sort put forward by big European clubs who want the Champions League to be the be-all-and-end-all, because they're in prime place at the trough at that tournament. I don't care about them. I want these so-called "big" European clubs to stand up and be counted. I want them to come to tournaments like this one and perform. Being the best in the world should matter them, because it sure as hell matters to the Brazilians - something which is borne out by the previous results on this tournament.

For now, though, we have what we have, and it's great. Of course it is. Whether it's Internacional fans singing themselves hoarse at Schiphol Airport a full five days before their team was due to be involved at all, or Club America's Rojas using a part of his anatomy to score a goal which most coaches and players use merely to speak out of - and I can't help but think that the tournament will start to heat up now. The cynics are missing out.

Good morning/afternoon/evening, everyone. I was considering writing a full preview of today's match between Club America and Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors, but then it occurred to me that it will be kicking off by the time I've finished writing it, so I've take an executive decision to jettison that plan.

Sitting here in the Media Centre at The Olympic Stadium in Tokyo (which looks like nothing so much as a bigger model of the gymnasium at the school which I went to), I am struck by the considerably greater number of journalists here this evening than there were in Toyota City last night. Now, Toyota City is an absolute devil to get to, and it has to be said that they didn't miss the match of the tournament, but I was surprised to see quite so many empty seats at the Toyota Stadium last night. It doesn't look as if we're going to see the same thing happening again tonight, though. The presence of big hitters like Branco and Claudio Lopez has seen to that.

I was up until three o'clock this morning, watching Arsenal and Chelsea battle out a 1-1 draw at Stamford Bridge. It was nice to see Jens Lehmann and Didier Drogba auditioning for their places as pantomime villains in time for this Christmas, but I rather think that most of these casting decisions have already been made for this year, at least. What is interesting is the difference in cultures between football at home and football out here. Out here, it's all about friendship, in that almost-slightly-nauseating "hands across the ocean" way FIFA talks about things. I rather think that the supporters are supposed to leave the stadia after the match arm-in-arm, exchanging scarves and forging new friendships. At home, it's amusing to see the spit and bile that was accompanying the match played yesterday afternoon. From Alexander Hleb clattering into Ashley Cole in the first minute to Lehmann and Drogba pretending to have been knocked about by each other, there was no "togetherness in the name of football" on display at the Bridge yesterday.

It becomes difficult to take any of it seriously. Regardless of whatever Arsene and Jose were whining about after the match (and the good thing about watching matches that finish at three in the morning is that you don't have to sit through any of that guff afterwards), a point each did neither of them any favours. The only winners last weekend were the improbably unbeatable Manchester United. Meanwhile, out here in Japan, there is a bit of a buzz in the air this evening. It feels like, after something of a preliminary last night, there could be a real match on here tonight. I'll be back later to let you know, in my usual illiterate and rambling way, roughly what happened. In the mean-time, I'm off for a wander around outside the ground to see if i can find anything interesting to take photos of.

Well, we're one step closer to knowing who are going to be the World Club Champions. Or, rather, we aren't. To be precise, we're one step closer to knowing who aren't going to be the World Club Champions. It isn't going to be Auckland City, though this isn't an enormous surprise - the amateurs made an almighty scrap of it and lasted until the fifty-first minute before buckling, but in the end this was a routine victory for the African champions, who look as if they have got a lot of work to do if they're going to cause SC Internacional any serious difficulties in the semi-finals.

In all honesty, Ahly should have been have been two or three up by half-time - only tremendously profligate finishing prevented them from taking advantage of some extremely generous Auckland defending. They looked technically excellent in the middle third, but once the ball got anywhere near the Auckland goal, any semblance of composure went out of the window, and the ball ended up in the grateful arms of goalkeeper Nicholson or, more frequently, into the crowd behind the goal.

The breakthrough, when it eventually arrived, came six minutes into the second half, when Flavio turned past a defender on the edge of the penalty area and curled the ball into the top corner. It was a tremendous goal, especially considering the dislocated nature of what had preceded it, but Auckland City ultimately couldn't subsequently raise their game to the level required to give the Egyptians any major cause for concern. The game was sewn up with seventeen minutes to go, when Aboutrika curled a delightful free-kick past Nicholson, who stood motionless in that special position that goalkeepers reserve for when a shot is flying past them which they know that they can't do anything about. The biggest cheer of the night was reserved for the introduction of former Japan international Teri Iwamoto but, whilst he showed a decent first touch, he was clearly not match fit.

The atmosphere was what one might expect of such a match. FIFA announced the crowd as 29,900, but one would certainly question this, especially considering the vast banks of empty seats around the top tier of the stadium. Below us, there seemed to be an ongoing argument between a handful of perplexed looking stewards (and a solitary policeman) and about thirty Ahly supporters who seemed to be under the impression that they could, if they so chose, go and sit in the dug-out with the manager and the substitute. It all seemed to be fairly good natured, though and, considering that there seemed to be no more than a thousand or so of them, the level of noise that they made was impressive. Perhaps more will now fly out for the semi-finals. On this evidence, the team is going to need the fabled "twelfth man" that a good travelling support can bring them.

For Auckland City, there is only a fifth/sixth place play-off to look forward to, against Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors or Club America, and they're going to have their work cut out to avoid the wooden spoon. However, tonight they did at least demonstrate a commitment to trying to keep the ball on the floor, and they weren't the total walk-over that we might have expected them to be. Having said all of that, though, they will have benefited immeasurably from the increased exposure and financial rewards from getting into this competition in the first place - and they'll be another £5 or so better off if I'm successful in my next quest, which is to find an Auckland City scarf to bring home with me. If they've got any, I might bag myself a season ticket as well, while I'm about it. You know. Just in case.

To my considerable surprise, this post is coming to you from the media centre, deep in the bowels of the Toyota Stadium, in Toyota City. Sponsorship taken to its logical conclusion, I'm sure you'll agree. I've got my press pass, I've got my match ticket, and I'm ready to cheer on Auckland City against Ahly Sporting Club this evening.

Last night it was time to meet the bosses, whose idea of getting to know us was to take us to a Japanese restaurant and throw cold fish, hot fish, asparagus, meat and booze down our necks until I started arguing about why, at the time, it looked as if Tottenham had done a brilliant bit of business by signing Sergei Rebrov rather than Thierry Henry. Restless after everyone else had gone to bed, I wandered into town on my own and ended up watching the Manchester derby and Liverpool vs Fulham with a TEFL teacher from Yeovil. At one point, an Englishman walked in and asked breathlessly, "does anyone know how Ipswich got on today?", but we didn't. There had been no mention on the television of anybody playing below the Premiership. They don't know what they're missing out on.

This afternoon, we left for Toyota City on the Bullet Train. Whilst impressive to look at (it looks about twice the length of a standard British train), which didn't feel like it was going like a bullet. It took us an hour and three-quarters to reach Nagoya, and a further forty minutes on Nagoya's impressively baffling Metro system to reach the stadium itself. The Toyota Stadium is an impressive sight. Barely half a mile from the city centre, it was built in 2001 for the World Cup the following year, and is now the home of Gary Lineker's old mob, Nagoya Grampus 8. Having got my press pass and set up the laptop, I took the time to have a wander around the "Fan Festa", taking place in a car park outside the ground.

The perimeter of it was largely taken up with people selling food and drink, but at the end was a stage, upon which a large crowd was watching two people, one male and one female, talking about Brazil (I only knew this because I distinctly heard them mention "Ronaldinho" and "Ronaldo"). Now, I don't know if the Japanese are exceptionally easily pleased, or whether there was some hidden context that was missing to me, but it seemed like an awfully big crowd to be watching two people just sit and talk. If there had been dancing girls, or if they'd performed an impromptu "Kick Racism Out Of Football" song called "Da Doo Ron Atkinson" or something, then perhaps my interest in it could have been sustained for a little longer. As it was, two very cold looking people sitting on a stage didn't really do it for me, so I wandered back up here (taking time out en route to eat a taco and dribble approximately two-thirds of the content of it down my front) to write this.

One final memo to anybody that happens to be reading this from FIFA: if you're going to run a two page interview with somebody from Barcelona, can you use someone other than Carles Puyol? Not only is he dreadfully dull (sample: "You've spent a long time at FC Barcelona, beginning with your days at the cantera. What is it about FC Barcelona that fascinates? I can say with all confidence that FC Barcelona are the number club in the world", but he is also quite staggeringly ugly. Honestly - the guy's face could make milk curdle at fifty paces.