Sport
How will the Qatar World Cup affect the Premier League?
Over the international break, the Premier League confirmed its scheduling for next season which will be interrupted by the Qatar World Cup.
The campaign will kick off on August 6, with the final round of matches set for the usual simultaneous kick-off on May 28. That means the 2022-23 season will start only one week before 2021-22 began, with the season coming to an end just a week later than the current campaign will end next year. Despite stretching the season for two weeks, the Premier League confirmed there will be a six-week break from November and December for the World Cup.
Awarding the competition to Qatar was a controversial enough move by FIFA before it became clear that the summer tournament would have to switch to winter due to super-high temperatures. But over the next year or so, it will become increasingly obvious the World Cup is set to have a massive impact on the Premier League and other top domestic leagues around the world.
No time for preparations
As things stand, Premier League players will be in action for their clubs just a week or so before they will be expected to be in Qatar representing their countries. The last set of Premier League matches that are set to be played before the World Cup will be on November 12 and 13, with the league stating this will be matchweek 16. The World Cup’s opening fixture is set for November 21, giving players virtually no time to get acclimated to Qatar’s heat. Despite moving the tournament, temperatures in this part of the world are likely to be between 22 and 30 Celsius – which is hot for Britain’s summer but less of an issue for South American players.
Usually, international managers are able to gather their players for a pre-tournament training camp. This is a necessary part of preparations, giving them a chance to work on tactical systems. It acts as a pre-season, giving players a chance to fine-tune their fitness ahead of a busy and intense schedule. Instead, next year’s World Cup will see coaches working things out on the fly and players operating in the red zone fitness-wise, risking a lot of bad injuries.
Any players who get to the World Cup final – which is set to be played on December 17 – will then have just a week to rest before the Premier League resumes on Boxing Day. This season, various England players have struggled to adapt to life back in the Premier League following the heartbreak of losing the Euro 2020 final to Italy on penalties. A failed transfer is not the only reason Harry Kane has lost form, with international team-mates including Harry Maguire and Raheem Sterling also having a difficult time after returning to club duty. Premier League bosses may decide to give World Cup stars more of a rest but those with smaller squads may struggle.
As usual, it is the players who are forgotten about. It is easy to imagine players protecting themselves in the weeks leading up to the tournament as they will want to avoid injury. They will then be expected to return to club duty with virtually no time to decompress from the extreme emotional highs and lows of playing for their country in a festival of football – a career highlight.
Fitting everything in a challenge
The Premier League’s statement confirming matchweek 16 will be on the weekend of November 12-13 means it is possible to start mapping out how next season’s schedule will play out around the World Cup.
This year, the weekend of November 20-21 correlates to matchweek 12. But there will not be an international break in October 2022, so that will be an opportunity to fit in a couple of league games, though teams in European competition will face a particularly daunting set of fixtures.
UEFA plans to have the Champions League group stage wrapped up by November 2. A condensed group stage of six matches will take place over a period of under two months, which does not leave many free midweeks at all for any extra Premier League rounds to fit in.
Lower down the pyramid, fixtures will continue in League One and League Two while the Championship has a break for the World Cup, albeit a shorter one than the Premier League. The EFL has also confirmed that the fourth round of the Carabao Cup is set to be played between the World Cup final and the resumption of Premier League action on Boxing Day.
There will no doubt be increased calls for the little-loved competition to be dropped to free up space in a tight schedule – few other major footballing countries have two domestic cups these days – but the EFL has signalled that is not going to happen.
The Premier League has been left in a difficult position by the switch to a winter World Cup, with none of the alternative plans to fit everything into the schedule particularly appealing either. But by allowing such a tight window for stars to represent their countries, it is likely to leave the 2022-23 Premier League nothing more than a shambles, with players pushed to their limits.
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