The Christmas period in England is not only the most watched time for the EPL, it is also the make or break period for most teams. Teams actually will plan their season around how they will play during this period. Between December 24 and January 6, teams can play up to five times. This is the iconic English style of football, with nearly every other league in the world taking a winter break, allowing players to rest and recover. England instead will put players into overdrive, teams skipping practices to recover from the previous game instead. However, the Qatar World Cup of 2022 (2021?) wishes to change all that, with switching it from the classic summer World Cup to a winter tournament. Qatar's desire for this is to improve playing standards in their country and enhance their World Cup tournament. For Qatar, this is a chance to advertise their country, get tourists and industries to enter the country. However, its desire to change the timing of the World Cup would destroy the most enjoyed time of the EPL. For fans, their Boxing Day and New Years Day are planning around going to their football team's match. With school holidays and vacation work days, it is the perfect time for games to happen. Now, the World Cup Final final match would actually end around mid-December, the issue is players are required by FIFA to have minimum of two weeks holiday after any tournaments. This would eliminate the Christmas chaos. For EPL and the English FA, it is a headache for rescheduling matches during the most watched Christmas period, but the bigger issue is the media and sponsors, who during this 2 week period, receive a large share of the entire seasons profits. This money then is trickled down to the league and the club. With the move, that is a lot of money being left behind. While most clubs and leagues in Europe would have a problem readjusting, none so as much as England. For more information about the EPL Christmas period, take a look at this article: http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/what-qatar-winter-world-cup-6514982. Do you think England's Christmas period games should be a reason to stop Qatar's World Cup winter move? Does the EPL have enough power to stop the move? Comment your thoughts below.
It's quite inconvenient that all the regular schedules and breaks now have to be adjusted just to allow Qatar to host the World Cup. I'm curious to see how this will play out in the future and interested to see the reaction from the soccer community.
ResponderEliminarThis is a major headache. I can understand why the EPL and the English FA would be outraged at potentially missing the most profitable period of the season over issues stemming from Qatar's World Cup bid. Unfortunately, I think that these English leagues don't have enough ground to stand on as playing the World Cup in the heat of the Qatar summer as it usually would be is a borderline human rights issue. I think that while it is a major pain for the EPL to miss this significant stretch, the best course of action is to just establish the fact that the 2022 World Cup might have to be played in December 2021 and at least provide the EPL with enough time to develop their own plan at combatting this loss of time. It really is just a bad situation either way you look at it and it all could have been avoided had this issues along with the many others surrounding Qatar's bid been brought up when the site of the 2022 World Cup was being deliberated. Qatar would likely not have been given the bid in the first place.
ResponderEliminarThis is an excellent pos that brings up a huge problem with the Qatar World Cup being held in the winter. The first solution I would have would be to definitely host the tournament in the summer, but that poses a lot of other issues specifically the health and safety of the players. Perhaps a compensation package for each premier league team could be provided by FIFA if the tournament were to be held in December?
ResponderEliminar-Colin Zaccagnio