LONDON — The head of the Premier League has joined the English Football Association in calling on FIFA to consider taking the 2022 World Cup away from Qatar.
Growing health concerns about playing in the searing heat of the Gulf summer have forced the issue onto the agenda for the next meeting of FIFA’s hierarchy in October.
While the English FA would be open to the World Cup moving to winter, the world’s richest football league firmly opposes that because of the disruption it would cause to the usual August-May season.
Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore says that if FIFA deems it impossible to play in the summer, “they need to move the location. We can’t just, on a whim, decide to move to the winter.”