FIFPro, the union of worldwide professional football players, has issued a statement saying the 2022 World Cup finals in Qatar must be held in the winter instead of the traditional summer months.
FIFPro believes it would be in the best interests of the tournament to move the finals to the winter months in the small Gulf country, despite FIFA’s decision to award the tournament to Qatar based on its bid as a summer competition.
Sepp Blatter, the FIFA president, has been subjected to considerable criticism after FIFA’s executive awarded the tournament to Qatar on December 2 ahead of Australia, Japan, South Korea and the USA.
This was despite Qatar having the weakest technical bid of all the bidding nations for 2022 under FIFA’s own vetting procedures.
FIFA committee member Franz Beckenbauer aired his concerns over potential health risks to players playing a tournament in June or July, while Blatter has recently intimated his willingness to switch the tournament to the winter months in the Gulf region, where the recent Club World Cup was held in the United Arab Emirates.
“It is not sensible to award a World Cup in the summer to a country with an average temperature of 41ºC in June and July, a midday temperature of 50ºC and above all, extremely high humidity,” said Tijs Tummers, secretary of FIFPro’s Technical Committee:
“Tourists are advised not to travel to Qatar in the summer months.
“Inhabitants of Qatar leave the country en masse during this period. The summer months in Qatar also do not provide suitable conditions for a festival of football such as the World Cup should be, including for the supporters.”
Tummers is against the idea of players lining up in air-conditioned stadiums, the idea that was put forward as part of the Qatar bid before they begin work on the stadiums required to host the world’s biggest sports event.
He does not foresee major problems in switching the tournament to winter to enable Qatar to host it.
“The organisers have guaranteed that the temperature inside the stadiums and at the training centres will be reduced to 27 ºC by means of air-conditioning,” said Tummers. “That is all well and good, but it obviously does not fit in with ecological thinking, which we expect to be even more widespread by 2022.
“We will of course have to take a careful look at the international match calendar, but FIFPro does not foresee any insurmountable problems in this regard. Space will have to be made for the tournament, even though many countries already have a winter break.
“In Europe, competitive matches will have to be played in August and the second half of May and the first half of June.
If you look at what happened last weekend with weather problems in Europe because of heavy snowfall, you could see this as an advantage rather than as a problem. And it might perhaps turn out that the players will be fitter at the start of a winter World Cup than was the case last summer at the World Cup in South Africa. (Eurosport).’