"I'm thinking about going to Spain this summer," a taxi driver in Iwata told me Saturday. "It's the World Championship and Jubilo will be there, you see."

He looked so happy and enthusiastic I didn't have the heart to tell him the Club World Championship had been postponed to 2003. Only a few hours before I met him, FIFA announced it was postponing this year's tournament.

The 12-team tournament to decide the No. 1 club in the world, initially slated for July 28-Aug. 12 in Spain, has been the central focus for Jubilo and its fans this season.

For Jubilo, club officials and everyone involved, participation in the tournament validated all their hard work, planning and efforts in trying to bring Jubilo up to international level.

"This shouldn't be official until it is sanctioned by a FIFA executive committee meeting," Jubilo president Tadanori Arata said on Saturday in the vain hope of delaying the inevitable.

Nearly 20 years ago, Arata and fellow officials sat down together in their office in Iwata to set about transforming the club -- then called Yamaha in the non-professional Japan Soccer League -- and making it No. 1 in Japan and beyond. Their work has paid off. Jubilo, which joined the J. League in 1994, became the J. League champion in 1997 and 1999, won the Asian Club Championship in 1998 and 1999 and the Asian Super Cup in 1999, making it the top club in Asia and qualifying it for the Club World Championship.

Former Jubilo and Japan manager Hans Ooft, an integral part of Yamaha's and Jubilo's success over the years, could not hide his frustration with FIFA's announcement.

"We have been going up step by step for almost 20 years and at the last moment we've got this? No, thank you!" he said.

So far, Jubilo hasn't received any information about the postponement from FIFA, including whether or not this year's participants will be guaranteed a spot in the 2003 event. Even if it is awarded a berth, the team will not be the same in two years time. Some players will have moved on; some will have retired.

On Friday, FIFA said on its Web site that the decision came after "careful examination of the situation" at an Emergency Committee meeting in Zurich.

Soccer's world governing body cited three reasons for the decision: 1) scheduling problems; 2) commercial difficulties involving some of the participating clubs; and 3) difficulties in finding sponsors after the bankruptcy of ISL/ISMM, the FIFA-appointed marketing company for the tournament. This is believed to be the main reason for the current problems.

How did this mess come about?

Firstly, FIFA is the organization that has been working on a coordinated competition calendar. It's embarrassing that they are now saying that club schedules are disrupting the planning of such a prestigious event.

Secondly, FIFA cited the ISL/ISMM bankruptcy as making it difficult to search for sponsors with only two months left. But a source close to ISL in London earlier said the company's financial difficulties had been known for well over a year. FIFA has been working for a long time with ISL/ISMM and surely was in a position to know what was going on. It should have had enough time to sort things out and look for sponsors well ahead of its marketing partner's bankruptcy.

It seems that with the possibility of French group Vivendi moving in to take over ISL/ISMM, FIFA became complacent and was left without a safety net.

ISL/ISMM's bankruptcy will not just affect the Club World Championship; it will also disrupt the 2002 World Cup.

The two hosts -- South Korea and Japan -- have not found a sponsor to deal with information technology business. ISL was in charge of looking for this type of sponsor and hadn't come up with anything by the time it collapsed, which also contributed to the disruption of ticket sales on the Internet.

On Saturday, the Japanese organizing committee (JAWOC) had to cancel Web-site volunteer applications. (Mail-in applications are still going ahead.)

It's always the locals -- like JAWOC, KOWOC (the Korean World Cup organizing committee) and clubs like Jubilo and their fans -- who suffer from FIFA's inadequacies. The sport's world governing body doesn't seem to have any solid management/organizing skills or the prospect of getting such skills.

With the postponement of the Club World Championship, Arata says Jubilo will be hit financially by the disruption of its merchandising campaign related to the tournament. A local travel agent also has had to cancel package tours arranged for the tournament, which drew applications from more than 1,000 fans.

But the damage isn't just financial. Arata stressed that the delay is a severe psychological blow to the club and, more importantly, the people involved in supporting its efforts to raise Jubilo's profile. He believes that the postponement is a serious blow to soccer in Japan and Asia.

"Clubs in the J. League and in the rest of Asia were given a golden opportunity to be part of the soccer world with the Club World Championship," he explained. "This is important for the clubs and the players as it gives them additional motivation.

"For the J. League, the tournament has helped convince fans that their league is important in world terms.

"If the tournament is canceled for good -- we still don't know what will happen to the 2003 version -- it will be a big blow to the sport here."