![INTERVIEW: Asia’s football chief says winter scheduling for 2034 World Cup will be ideal [Dawn]](https://footballpakistan.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/AFC-president-Sheikh-Salman.jpg "INTERVIEW: Asia’s football chief says winter scheduling for 2034 World Cup will be ideal [Dawn]")
by Umaid Wasim
THERE remains a strong possibility that, just like the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, the 2034 edition in Saudi Arabia will be played during the cooler winter months instead of the traditional summer slot. Although it hasn’t been finalised yet, the idea has the backing of Asia’s football leader Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa.
FIFA confirmed at the end of last year that Saudis will fulfil their long-standing ambition of hosting football’s showpiece tournament after an unopposed bid and become the second country in the Arabian peninsula to host a World Cup after Qatar. The World Cup in Qatar was the first to be held in November-December to avoid the searing desert heat of the summer and Sheikh Salman, the Asian Football Confederation president, wants the Saudis to do the same.
“I don’t see it any other way but there is still a long way to 2034 and I think it depends on FIFA and the confederations to decide,” Sheikh Salman, who is also FIFA’s senior vice-president, told Dawn in an interview during his three-day visit to Pakistan as a state guest.
“The time will come for them to decide but I think I agree why the World Cup should not only be in the summer,” he added. “Like even in the United States [the joint-hosts of the 2026 FIFA World Cup alongside Canada and Mexico] in the summer, it’s too hot in some cities and if you want to play in the afternoon, it is very difficult for the players.”
Sheikh Salman pointed out that despite the winter scheduling of the World Cup resulting in a tweak in the calendar, it sees peak performance levels from the players who are midway into the season, especially those playing in European leagues.
“People will dispute [the timing] that it will interrupt the calendar but you know when you have players coming in after some months into the season, you can see the difference on the pitch,” he said, referring to performances by Argentina’s totemic forward Lionel Messi who guided his country to long-awaited World Cup glory in Qatar.
“I don’t think a player like Messi could have performed at his age in a World Cup if he’d played the whole season and come in the summer. He played magnificently, he won the best player, which I think we all agree he was.”
Sheikh Salman also had words of praise for Qatar, the city-sized country that delivered a spectacular World Cup without any hiccups.
“I don’t think Qatar even got what they deserved from their success,” he said. “I don’t think anyone wants to say positive things about how Qataris handled the World Cup, particularly in the West and we’ve noticed that. But to me, it was the best World Cup I’ve seen since I’ve been in football. I’ve been there, I saw the stadiums, and I saw how even the teams were back in their hotel within an hour after the match.”
The World Cup in Qatar was the last edition to be played with 32 teams, with the 2026 edition to see the number of teams increased to 48 teams. There has been growing talk to increase the number of teams to 64 for the 2030 edition — to be hosted in Spain, Portugal and Morocco with some matches in South America as well — and beyond.
In April this year, Saudi Arabia’s sports minister Prince Abdelaziz Turki bin Faisal said his country would be “more than happy” to hold an even more expanded World Cup but Sheikh Salman believes it is too early to decide with no guarantee of even the 48-team event being a success.
“I’m not against 64 teams,” he said. “But what I’m against is changing the regulations because you’ve already decided [48 teams] in the Congress and the [hosting] bids that were submitted for 2026, 2030 and 2034 and were approved on their own form, which is the 48 teams … There are obligations on the host countries to do what needs to be done.
“There are costs, there are stadiums, training facilities, all these things are involved. And when it is approved, you cannot keep changing them. You can talk beyond [the] 2034 [edition] if you want to take [the number of teams] to 64 or you want to come down to 32, that’s a different story.
“But we haven’t tried the 48 teams yet. The first event is going to be next year so we need to assess that a 48-team World Cup is good or bad and then we can decide whether to go higher or stay as we are or even go lower. It depends on whatever is best for FIFA and the 211 members.”
The push to go on the higher side remains unrelenting though, with the promise of more teams and wider interest. But further expansion brings other issues as well, most notably the countries that are able to host it. With the World Cup set to come back to Asia just 12 years after Qatar, Sheikh Salman believes the continent could well become the location of choice for the football showpiece.
“I think Asia is probably the second continent that can host the World Cups in the future,” he said. “We know Europe has the infrastructure but with the expansion of the World Cup, it’s not so easy for countries to host this event with the cost and the infrastructure that is needed. We’ve already seen what Qatar has done in 2022. I think it will be difficult to repeat that success with 32 teams. Maybe in the future, it will be back to 32 teams again, but we don’t know about it.”
Note: This is the second and final part of a wide-ranging interview with the AFC president. The first part was published on Thursday and can be accessed on Dawn.com.