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English Premier League teams will need to prepare for a packed schedule to accommodate the 28-day World Cup taking place in Qatar for the first time in November and December, as opposed to the usual summer months. Usually played in the off-season break in-between seasons, the World Cup 2022 has caused a big shift in the schedule, kicking into gear certain contingency plans.
Will the EPL be put on pause for the World Cup?
The strategy that the League has adopted is to start the season a week earlier, on 6 August 2022, and end it a week later, on 28 May 2023, freeing up 2 weeks’ worth of fixture space. Then, for the first time in the League’s history, it will take a prolonged mid-season break from 14 November, during which the almost month-long World Cup will take place. The EPL is set to resume just eight days after the World Cup Final on Boxing Day, a contentious decision given that players have come to expect three weeks’ recovery time after the World Cup at minimum. The World Cup itself will start on 21 November 2022, giving players a week or so to train with their national teams and prepare, as opposed to the standard three-to-four week pre-Cup preparation period.
The 2022 schedule, broken down
Here’s a summary of how this will all play out:
- 6 August: start of the new English Premier League season
- 12-13 November (weekend): final EPL matchday before the mid-season break
- 21 November: World Cup 2022 kicks off in Qatar
- 3-6 December: World Cup Round of 16
- 9-10 December: World Cup Quarter-finals
- 13-14 December: World Cup Semi-finals
- 18 December: World Cup 2022 Final
- 26 December: English Premier League resumes the season
Why will the World Cup be played in winter?
The reason for this is that Qatar’s summers are brutal, with soaring temperatures in the range of 36 degrees celsius that will make the game unplayable for players and a very unpleasant experience for the fans. The wintertime temperatures vary around 21 to 25 degrees which is much more manageable for players, and to help with the humidity and heat in the stadiums, sophisticated air-conditioning systems have been built into each of the eight stadiums hosting World Cup games.
Which teams and players will be most affected?
The World Cup’s participating nations will call up roughly a quarter of all English Premier League players, with Man City and Chelsea contributing the bulk of their squads, while teams like Newcastle, Everton and Southampton may potentially not be affected at all. It follows that the World Cup could be a detriment, but also a huge opportunity for certain teams, depending on their squad availability. How these teams manage this anomaly could potentially become a huge factor in how each team’s campaign plays out until the end of the season. In the last round of international fixtures in June, about 150 players from the Premier League and Championship were called up, about 80 percent from the former, and in total players from English football almost make up 20 percent of all World Cup players to represent the 32 nations.
Among the huge names not competing in the World Cup because their countries did not qualify are Man City’s huge new Norwegian signing, Erling Haaland and Algeria’s Riyad Mahrez, Liverpool’s star striker, Egyptian Mohammed Salah, as well as the Reds’ Scottish defender Andy Robertson. Tottenham’s Dejan Kulusevski from Sweden, as well as their new signing Yves Bissouma from Mali, Crystal Palace’s Wilfried Zaha from Ivory Coast, and Leicester City’s Nigerian striker Kelechi Iheanacho will also similarly not take part.
As a result, it’s looking optimistic for teams like Liverpool, West Ham, Leicester City and teams with few or no players called up, who are very likely to take full advantage of the break during the World Cup to rest their players and come back swinging when the season resumes thereafter. This could backfire, however, if players lose the momentum of playing regular football games and maintaining their fitness and overall form.
Ultimately, this year’s unprecedented World Cup arrangements will make for an interesting season of the English Premier League and should inspire some unpredictable drama.
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