Holding the 2022 World Cup finals in Qatar at the end of that year rather than the  summer is FIFA president Sepp Blatter’s preferred option, he told French radio station France Info yesterday.

Blatter admitted it would involve altering the domestic league programmes.

“We cannot play the World Cup in summer,” said Blatter.

“The date which is the most convenient is the end of the year.”

Blatter, however, agreed the change would not please clubs.

“However, the World Cup is too important,” he said.

Switching the finals to the beginning of the year would present an extra problem as it could well clash with the Winter Olympics.

Qatar has always said it is ready to host either a winter or summer World Cup in 2022.

“Our bid was for it to be in summer,” HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani  told CNN in an interview recently. “At the end, it’s up to FIFA to decide when is the best time.”

To protect players from the heat of Qatar’s summer, the country is developing sophisticated airconditioning systems for its stadiums.

“Summer or winter, we will be ready,” Nasser al-Khater, executive director of Communications and Marketing for the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy,  had also said in a statement recently.   

“We have proven that a FIFA World Cup in Qatar in the summer is possible with state-of-the-art cooling technology,” al-Khater had pointed out.