The English Premier League will have a seven-week mid-season break in the 2022-23 season for players to participate in the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
As the World Cup will be held in the winter for the first time in Qatar, European leagues will be forced to have long winter breaks to accommodate the quadrennial tournament.
The season will begin on August 6, one week earlier than usual, break for the World Cup on November 12, and return to action on December 26.
The World Cup will begin on November 21, with the final to be played on December 18. This means that Premier League players participating in the World Cup will have only about a week with their national teams ahead of the tournament.
Those who reach the final will have about eight days to recover before their clubs take the field for the 2022 Boxing Day fixtures.
Sky Sports had first reported that executives of all 20 EPL clubs met on Wednesday evening to discuss the scheduling of the extraordinary season, among other things.
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The toll on players
The break is expected to push the end of the 2022-23 season by a week as well, which would mean that the FA Cup and Champions League finals of that season could be played in June.
Managers and players have already been complaining about the congested football calendar with most clubs having to play at least three to four competitions simultaneously every year.
By extending the start and end of the season by just two weeks to accommodate a seven-week break would mean even more mid-week games, which is likely to take a toll on players.
The World Cup is being scheduled for the winter months of November and December as temperatures in Qatar can go up to 50-deg Celsius in the summer.
UEFA threatens WC boycott
In other news, UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has that Europe could boycott the World Cup if the world body goes ahead with its plan to host the World Cup every two years.
Ceferin said that FIFA is yet to respond to UEFA’s request for talks to discuss the concerns raised by European nations.
Former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger had been instrumental in pushing for the change, which could disrupt the cycle of club and continental tournaments and even events like the Olympics.
“There are real dangers associated with this plan: The dilution of the value of the No 1 world football event, whose quadrennial occurrence gives it a mystique that generations of fans have grown up with; the erosion of sporting opportunities for the weaker national teams by replacing regular matches with final tournaments; the risk to sustainability for players, forced to engage in summer high intensity competitions every year instead of longer recuperation breaks in alternate years,” UEFA said in a statement.
