Qatar World Cup official dates announced

Zurich: World football’s governing body FIFA on Friday announced the dates of the 2022 World Cup to be held in Qatar.

The 28-day tournament will kick off on Monday, November 21 while the final is scheduled for Sunday, December 18 -- Qatar’s national day.

This will be the first time that world football’s showpiece event will be held outside its traditional June-July slot. The 2014 World Cup was played over 32 days, from June 14 to July 15.

The tournament is being moved due to concerns about the summer heat in Qatar, which can reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

The 2022 edition will be four fewer days than the usual 32 days and is designed to cause less disruption to clubs and leagues which must shut down for several peak midseason weeks.

The calendar, which was announced by FIFA’s executive committee on Friday, means clubs must release players to the 32 World Cup teams by November 14, 2022 -- a week before the start of the tournament.

FIFA had postponed the announcement of the 2022 World Cup schedule while it held talks on the 2019-2024 schedule of national team fixtures. The international calendar mandates when clubs must release players for national team duty.

No national team matches have been set for October 2022.

Despite hastily canceling a news conference scheduled with President Sepp Blatter after the surprise arrival of Swiss federal police at its headquarters, FIFA did make some decisions during its two-day executive committee meeting that ended Friday, apart from the 2022 World Cup dates.

Here’s a look at other things that took place during FIFA’s executive meeting this week:

NEXT MEETING

FIFA said the next executive meeting will take place in Zurich instead of Japan, a change from what had been originally scheduled.

The Japanese delegation arrived in Zurich expecting to host the meeting during the Club World Cup in December, but FIFA announced Tuesday it needed to reevaluate the date and venue. Japanese football association president Kuniya Daini said a few days ago that he still expected the meeting to be held in Japan, but FIFA decided to keep it at its Swiss headquarters.

Hosting the meeting in Switzerland instead of Japan would significantly diminish the risk of arrests, including of Blatter, amid separate U.S. and Swiss investigations into corruption in world soccer. Football officials have been reluctant to visit countries which have an extradition treaty with the United States, which spearheaded the main investigation earlier this year.

It will be the final executive meeting of the year, and the last before Blatter is scheduled to be replaced on Feb. 26.

OLYMPIC SOCCER

FIFA confirmed that there would be no obligation for clubs to release players for the men’s Olympic football tournament in Rio de Janeiro next year, as the event isn’t part of the international match calendar.

“However, FIFA is asking for support from the clubs to allow players who are called up by their national teams to be given the chance to be part of the Olympic experience,” the governing body said.

Brazil’s Neymar is among the top players who have already shown interest in playing in Rio, but his participation will now depend on Barcelona’s willingness to release him.

NO DEL NERO

The organizing committee for the Olympic football tournament met this week in Zurich without its chairman, Brazilian federation president Marco Polo Del Nero, who has not left Brazil since the arrest of FIFA officials in Zurich earlier this year.

The meeting in Zurich had to be chaired by committee vice president Lydia Nsekera of Burundi.

It was the third meeting missed by Del Nero since the FIFA corruption scandal broke. The Brazilian left Switzerland suddenly in May after other officials were arrested in dawn raids on FIFA’s favorite hotel in Zurich, and since then has stayed in his home country to avoid the risk of being arrested.

The Brazilian football federation did not say why Del Nero skipped this week’s meeting. Last time, it said he needed to stay home to deal with “local matters involving the Brazilian federation.”

REFUGEES

FIFA said it will donate $1 million (Dh3.67 million) to the United Nations’ refugee agency, calling it “the most efficient way for FIFA to help” the migrants coming to Europe.