How badly will the stupid Qatar World Cup screw up the football fixtures for next season? I mainly follow the EPL but it’s going to be a colossal mess for all the leagues, right?
They’ll need to insert a long break:
(article from last November)
On Thursday, it was announced the next campaign would stop after the weekend of 12/13 November before fixtures resumed again on 26 December.
The season will also begin a week earlier than normal on 6 August and finish a week later on 28 May.
Qatar World Cup 2022: Premier League to have break of more than six weeks in 2022-23 season - BBC Sport
Other leagues will do the same. Take a long break, play a few matches not on the regular days to catch up, start earlier, finish later.
Honestly, I’d like to see a World Cup without the usual professional players for once. Inject a lot more interest and randomness/uncertainty into the equation. I was hoping this Qatar would be it.
Ok, the Community Shield match will be on July 30.
So, definitely early.
“Randomness”, sure. “Interest”, perhaps for you, but the vast majority of people paying for soccer experiences want to see “the best”, and FIFA is all about the money. (Or there wouldn’t have been a Qatar WC in the first place.)
And though you wrote without the “usual” professionals, in most soccer playing nations* the players are professionals not only in the top league but the next level, and possibly the one below that, as well. Perhaps one could envision that top teams only released a few bench warmers because they were annoyed with the timing of the event, but then you’d run into the issue of the WC matches themselves siphoning a large portion of soccer attention away from national leagues for a couple of weeks, which would also be an issue for clubs whose economic survival depend on drawing as large a crowd as the possibly can.
*this is my expectation based on it being the case in tiny Norway