Agencies/Zurich

Football’s ruling body FIFA on Friday confirmed the dates for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar while a news conference with its president Joseph Blatter was cancelled on short notice.
The news conference, to be the first in two months for the outgoing Blatter, was cancelled five minutes before its planned start.
Instead FIFA issued a statement on the decisions and recommendations by its executive committee from two-day meetings, including that the 2022 World Cup will start on November 21.
With the final already scheduled for December 18, the tournament over 28 days will be the shortest World Cup since Argentina 1978 when 16 teams played over 24 days. The World Cup now has 32 teams and the last editions were played over more than 30 days.
FIFA named the dates as part of the “approval of the international match calendar for the 2018-2024 period, including the competition dates for the 2022 World Cup to be staged from November 21 to December 18, 2022”.
The worldwide match calendar has to be rearranged to accommodate the winter World Cup. The tournament is normally played in summer but was rescheduled because of the heat in Qatar in June and July.
The dates were agreed in principle back in March, where FIFA vice-president Jim Boyce said that the Premier League would look to resume its fixtures on Boxing Day, effectively meaning that clubs would be taking a winter break at the 2022-23 season.
“There are seven years to prepare for this until 2022,” Boyce had said earlier this year. “I think it could be a tremendous World Cup because I think players will be fresher than they have ever been. It’s going to be 28 days, it’s not a lifetime. It means (domestic leagues) starting three weeks earlier and finishing three weeks later for one year.”
World Cups are typically played over 32 days but it is thought that the reduced timescale is to minimise the impact on participating nations’ domestic competitions.
Qatar has already begun construction work at the site where the 2022 final will be played. The start of the preparatory work at the site in Lusail has been announced by tournament officials recently.
“Lusail Stadium, the centrepiece of the first World Cup in the Middle East, will seat 80,000 spectators in a spectacular venue inspired by Qatari traditions and culture,” according to the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy (SC), the body overseeing World Cup projects in the state.
Earlier this month, Qatar had announced it would complete work on the first tournament venue to be used in the competition by 2016.
Up to 12 stadiums will be used for the World Cup in 2022.
A final decision on the number of venues will be made by the end of this year.
Earlier on Friday, FIFA cancelled a press conference with Blatter just minutes before it was due to start, offering no explanation.
Blatter had been due to speak for the first time since his number two, secretary general Jerome Valcke, was placed on leave last week following accusations regarding ticket sales at the 2014 World Cup.
FIFA said in a statement that the meeting had decided to move the committee’s next gathering, in December, from its planned venue of Tokyo to FIFA headquarters in Zurich.
Blatter has only once left Zurich, to travel to Russia, since May, when 14 soccer and sports marketing officials were arrested on money laundering and other corruption-related charges.