The Bureau of the FIFA Council has endorsed “on a unanimous decision” the advancement of a day of the opening match of the World Cup-2022 in Qatar, the body announced Thursday evening in a press release.
“The ceremony and the opening match of the competition at Al Bayt Stadium have thus been brought forward by one day on a unanimous decision by the Bureau of the FIFA Council today,” said the world soccer governing body.
Consequently, the match between the host country of the competition and Ecuador, initially scheduled for November 21, will therefore take place on November 20 at 7 p.m. local time at the Al Bayt stadium in Al Khor, north of Doha, while the meeting between Senegal and the Netherlands, initially scheduled for 1:00 p.m. local time on Monday, November 21, was postponed to 7:00 p.m. the same day.
This decision will revive a recent tradition in which the first match of each World Cup is played by the host country, such as Russia-Saudi Arabia in the 2018 edition.
“The Opportunity of a Lifetime”
“Playing the opening match of the first World Cup played in the Middle East and the Arab world is the opportunity of a lifetime for Qatar,” the organizing committee said in a press release. The world will watch as our proud nation kick off the greatest sporting event against Ecuador. »
FIFA explains that it took this decision “following an assessment of the sporting and operational implications of this rescheduling, as well as an exhaustive consultation process and agreement with the main stakeholders and the host country, which then resulted in an agreement”. .
“Ticket holders will be duly informed by email of the new schedule of the matches concerned, for which their tickets remain valid. In addition, FIFA will work to resolve any issues caused by this change on a case-by-case basis.
The body finally specifies that the period of availability of players will remain unchanged, always starting on November 14, 2022.
On the side of the economic partners, this very unusual change will be “managed”, assured Wednesday Jaime Byrom, president of Match Hospitality, a company having an agreement with FIFA to organize accommodation packages for World Cup matches and which reserved 450,000 tickets for the tournament.
“Compared to other challenges that we might have encountered or that we have encountered in the past, it’s really not a very big problem,” Byrom told AFP.
“We will look at our Ecuadorian customers who are traveling from abroad, and make sure they are in time for the match,” he said.
Changing the countdown
The opening match is scheduled for the 60,000-capacity Al Bayt Stadium, one of seven new venues built specifically for the tournament since the World Cup was awarded to Qatar in 2010.
The gas-rich Gulf state is preparing a spectacular opening ceremony for the World Cup in this stadium, the structure of which was inspired by the traditional tents of the Gulf’s Bedouins.
The change in date for the opening game involves a change to the hundred-day countdown to the World Cup which was due to kick off on Saturday, with events staged that day across the emirate of 2.8 million inhabitants, approximately 90% of whom are foreigners.
Qatar is the first country in the Middle East to host one of the biggest sporting events in the world. The competition has been moved from summer to late autumn 2022 due to extreme temperatures in the Gulf emirate.
While FIFA President Gianni Infantino has promised that Qatar will host the “best” World Cup ever, the country has come under heavy criticism over the rights of migrant workers as well as for its criminalization of homosexuality.