Soccerphile Editorial - September 2013
Qatar World Cup 2022
An expensive U-turn it may ultimately be, but Fifa's executive committee look certain to recommend that the 2022 World Cup in Qatar be played a full five months later than originally scheduled when they meet later this week.
How the same executive committee failed to grasp the potentially health-threatening ramifications of granting the rights to the 2022 World Cup to Qatar - where summer temperatures can reach 50°C - is of course a lingering question that raises a certain amount of suspicion about the allocation procedure.
The one-round bidding process was clearly inherently flawed in the first instance, and few followers of the game trust Fifa sufficiently given the bribery scandals that have befallen football's governing body in recent times in the form of the Chuck Blazer and Jack Warner affairs.
But there seems to be little possibility of stripping Qatar of the flagship tournament despite this criticism.
There has been some noise from Australia, a fellow candidate for the 2022 finals. However, if, as is likely, Fifa rubberstamps a switch from mid-summer to November for the competition, Football Federation Australia is simply going to have to form an orderly queue to even demand compensation let alone receive any.
While FFA chief executive Frank Lowy was demanding compensation for the $40 million his organisation lavished on a bid that generated just a solitary vote (their own), that amount seems like small change compared with the $1 billion US broadcaster Fox revealed it had spent on securing the rights to broadcast the 2018 and 2022 finals - in the summertime.
Sky Sports in the UK might be second in line. After all, the British broadcaster together with new entrant BT Sport pays £1 billion a season to screen the Premier League.
Behind them, the TV companies dotted around the rest of Europe, Asia and South America will be vying for their piece of the financial pie, too.
And we haven't even considered the potential demand for recompense from any number of the national leagues that will have to rearrange their traditional calendars to accommodate the switch.
However, aside from the undisputed health advantages for players as well as for travelling supporters, one wonders whether the national team managers might reap the benefits of switching from June to November.
By far, the neatest proposal would be to somehow merge the hosting of the World Cup in 2022 into the traditional football schedule.
It might seem to be inconceivable, but one possible solution could be for Europe's leagues to kick off in August as usual, but simply break for an extended international recess in October and November before resuming at Christmas and finishing the 2022/23 campaign at the end of June.
Certainly, staging the World Cup in winter rather than in summer doesn't extend the number of matches in which the highest profile players will take part.
What's more, might, say, the English national team even benefit from participating in the World Cup after only a handful of Premier League matches rather than the usual 38-match marathon (plus cup commitments) that serves as the usual prelude to a World Cup.
No one could suggest that the job of the schedulers would be an easy one, notably because of the Champions League group matches that (in the competition's current guise) are usually staged throughout autumn.
But the thoughts of Roy Hodgson and the England national team players on this suggestion would be intriguing. After all, haven't past England managers bemoaned the tiredness caused by the intensity of the Premier League in the cross-examination of recent World Cup failures?
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