The Premier League have confirmed the start and end dates for the World Cup interrupted 2022/23 campaign.
Despite a 42 day hiatus between 14 November and 26 December, the season only kicks off a week earlier than normal (6 August) and ends just a week later (28 May).
As you can imagine, that’s going to make for a ridiculously hectic domestic schedule which for Arsenal, could *fingers crossed* include European fixtures in addition to Carabao Cup and FA Cup commitments.
God knows how the players are going to cope.
You’ll remember that Qatar ‘won’ the right to host FIFA’s showpiece tournament back in 2010 and only afterwards did everyone point out that playing football in 50 degrees heat might be a bit dangerous for supporters and spectators, hence the decision to move the competition to winter for the first time in its history.
That should be “end a week later on 28 May.”
Crazy decision, I wonder what motivated FIFA to hold the tournament at a crazy time of year in a country that doesn’t have much of a football history or a significant league?
As we all know ££££$$$$$€€€€
My understanding is that they just did it for the bants.
A literal LOL from me!
I am sure they had the best intentions of football.
It is beyond frustrating and depressing. All over the Arab World itself most football fans know full well the corruption that occurred to make this happen. Few people outside Qatar itself are celebrating it. And yet no one can do anything about it.
On€ tru£y wonder$
Hope that’s not really a serious question. 💰💶💵💴💰💰£$¥€💰
… How is the rest of the world going to get football history if FIFA doesn’t take football to the rest of the world?
I imagine there would be no international breaks that entire season, that’s 6 more weeks of club football between August and November. If it works out it might just be an amazing all action football season.
Why can’t people be happy and proud that humble Fifa just wish to bring smiles to Qatari faces
😩
This is very subtle 🤏
Exactly LB, Qatar are part of the football family
This is crazy. When will the footballers be put first? When???
Won’t somebody think of the children?!
It has been played out of summer before – when it was in South Africa.
Correct, just not outside of the European summer and club season.
And Chile. And Uruguay!
We’re going to need a deep squad and if we’re back in Europe there’ll be plenty of opportunities for youngsters coming through, hopefully Saliba, Azeez and Balogun are ready and we get a couple of top class signings in the summer. It’s going to be a hectic season after a World Cup and we have so many internationals it won’t be easy for them.
This could be the season where the youth teams win it for their respective clubs with seniors called away to the incredibly well thought out Qatari World Cup.
Perhaps there will be one or two fewer interlulls (maybe the October and March ones) since the season will already be disrupted by the mother of all interlulls for the World Cup.
March 2023 won’t be scrapped as that is already penciled in as the first two rounds of the UEFA Euro 2024 qualifying campaign.
I was also thinking the October 2022 interlull could be scrapped, but then that is the only viable window where national teams can play a couple of friendlies before the actual World Cup.
Unless pre-World Cup friendlies are scrapped altogether.
That picture of Blatter, daydreaming about the new superyacht he’s going to splash out on as a result of him and his cronies conspiring to engineer this result.
Piss off Blatter
I know it’s a bold statement, but I think that I dislike Blatter more than I have ever disliked anyone associated with Sp*rs…. that’s how much of a tool he is.
I’d like to see him and Platini spend the rest of their days in jail. Fingers crossed.
They, technically, didn’t break any country’s law so I doubt we’d get that satisfaction.
Sepp Blatter for sp*rs manager!
There’s always a simple solution.
Sepp Blatter is the human embodiment of a ballsack. Truly unpleasant guy
Whoah – let’s leave out the abuse of our ballsacks please! They deserve better.
This season we’ve already had three international breaks, losing 30-40 days of club time. I guess that we won’t have these next year and that that’s why the season will only need to be extended by two weeks. Not that I am for one moment suggesting that any of this is a good idea. On the contrary. It stinks.
An international tournament is only to soften the pain of not seeing Arsenal play during the summer. Interupting the league is unforgivable for mostly second rate games.
If the World Cup was 24 teams, maybe it would be more interesting again.
All the top people in football knew it wasn’t a well thought out idea and that money changed hands but none of the big associations of PFA’s did anything about it at the time so in a way they’re all culpable.
It’ll make for a very interesting season with the tail-end of 2022/23 and the whole of 2023/24 seeing a lot of injuries, what we don’t want to see is anymore Marc Vivian Foe or Christian Eriksen scenarios…
I’ve zero interest in international football I’d prefer to see a proper world club tournament in place of it.