Qatar World Cup Games Could Begin at 1 AM Local Time

Harold Mayne-Nicholls has a plan to combat the heat of Qatar for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. His plan is to stage all of the games at night to avoid the sunlight. This requires having games late into the night in order to fit the current group game schedule.

In a report from BBC Sport, Mayne-Nicholls, who is a possible challenger to Sepp Blatter’s FIFA Presidential role, wants to stage games at 7 PM, 10 PM and 1 AM Qatar time during the group stage. This way, the World Cup can still be in the summer and would help with TV times for most countries around the world. Qatar is 7 hours ahead of the eastern US timezone so that means games would be 12 noon ET/9 AM PT, 3 PM ET/12 noon PT and 6 PM ET/3 PM PT. So under this proposal, it would be the same TV schedule as the 2014 Brazil World Cup.

Out of all the crazy proposals on what to do for the 2022 World Cup, this seems to be the most sensible idea. Yeah Qatar will have very late games, but it keeps the World Cup in summer, which keeps most soccer leagues to drastically alter their schedules, and helps out the rest of the world in terms of being able to watch as many games as possible. Well, Asia is going to get somewhat screwed over but someone is getting screwed over either way and I’m a little bit biased and have a personal motive in wanting those game times.

Having said all this, there’s just one issue. Harold Mayne-Nicholls is thinking about going against Sepp Blatter for FIFA President. No matter how sensible his plan is, Blatter and anyone else who would ever want anything from Blatter in the future will never support it because they assume Blatter will win re-election and it’s best to be in his good graces once he’s won re-election. FIFA is planning on making a decision as to when to have the tournament next year so we’re running out of time to come up with ideas. It’s down to crunch time and it looks like FIFA is just spinning its wheels once again.

(BBC Sport)

About Phillip Bupp

Producer/editor of the Awful Announcing Podcast and Short and to the Point. News editor for The Comeback and Awful Announcing. Highlight consultant for Major League Soccer as well as a freelance writer for hire. Opinions are my own but feel free to agree with them. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram @phillipbupp

Quantcast