The 2034 World Cup in Saudi Arabia is set to be held in January with the Ramadan period set to hinder a repeat of Qatar’s winter World Cup.
Representatives of the 211 FIFA member associations will confirm the 2030 and 2034 hosts at next week’s congress. Saudi Arabia are the only candidate for the 2034 edition with the tournament, officially, still to be held in the summer.
Temperatures however could potentially reach 45 degrees in June, which is similar to the problems that meant Qatar had to be moved to the winter several years ago. Clashes with the religious festival though mean that a January World Cup is now more likely.
The Saudi dates coincide with the anticipated scheduling of Ramadan, when Muslims must fast during the day. Unless the Saudi authorities agree to allow non-observance of the main religious festival, which is thought to be unlikely, a kick-off at the beginning of January is being discussed, reports The Sun.
That will hit the Premier League’s festive schedule and means that the traditional Boxing Day games will be the final round of fixtures before the English football calendar comes to a close. The initial phase matches of the three European club competitions would also have to be fit into a reduced window.
The World Cup is set for expansion with the 2026 tournament in North America the first to include 48 teams. It means there are 104 games to fit in and the framework dictates that it would need 38 days to complete.
While that could be reduced slightly, 35 days is seen as the minimum possible time-frame. All in all that would see a seven week break across the Premier League season.
Despite concerns over human rights in the country, FIFA’s evaluation reporting scored that issue as a medium risk in its assessment, which resulted in Saudi Arabia scoring 419.8 points out of 500 – the highest evaluation score of any previous World Cup bidder.
FIFA’s report said improvements in human rights in the country will “take significant effort and time,” but added hosting the World Cup “could help contribute to positive human rights impacts.” There were similar concerns when Qatar were awarded the World Cup.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!
