CHENNAI: When the 2022 FIFA World Cup was shifted to November-December because of the merciless heat of the desert, there was a lot of hue and cry. Stadiums in Qatar had air-conditioning systems installed and matches, despite the heat, went on. Argentina were crowned champions, and it is time to shift our attention towards North America — US, Canada and Mexico — where the next World Cup is set to be held in 2026.
With just over two-and-a-half years remaining, climate scientists and physical education experts from Poland have come out with a paper that laid emphasis on heat stress on footballers during the hot season. The paper published in Scientific Reports revealed the perils of playing in such adverse conditions.
Marek Konefał, one of the co-authors of the paper and is a research and teaching professor at the University of Physical Education in Wrocław, said that perhaps it is time for the international football association (FIFA) to think about shifting the calendar to Spring/Autumn. And if air-conditioned stadiums were built in Qatar, that could well be necessary in the future. "Perhaps, taking into account the global temperature increase, the World Cup should be permanently moved to spring/autumn," he said in an email response to this daily. "Either way, it should be accepted that efficient air-conditioning of sports facilities will be necessary in the future."
The professor also said that it is time to rethink the sporting calendar because of the changing weather pattern. "The climate is warming, 2024 was the warmest year in recorded history, therefore the Football World Cups will be played in conditions of increasingly stronger heat stress. It is worth rethinking the calendar of sporting events now."
Konefal also explained that they were trying to give coaches, organisers and football federations information on heat load risk. "We scientists are trying to give coaches, organizers of sports events and football federations reliable information on the heat load risk for athletes performing high effort during the game," he said. "In our study we demonstrated diurnal variation of heat stress levels in particular locations to support coaching staffs and sport events organizers in planning training and match times appropriately to avoid playing at times with the highest risk of extreme heat stress."
Konefal said that it would be advisable for players to stay at one location to acclimatise or get used to the conditions. "It would be also advisable if the players did not drastically change the location and type of climate they stay in during the championships, but rather played matches in similar thermal stress conditions — that would give athletes a chance to partially adapt to them," he said.
"Our results can provide suggestions on which 2026 World Cup locations there is an urgent need to use efficient air conditioning solutions for sports facilities to reduce heat stress," he added.The research paper touched upon the wet bulb globe temperature (WGBT) index, which the researchers found a bit misleading. They modelled their studies around the Universal Thermal Climate index (UTCI)."Despite FIFA recommends the use of the WBGT index to determine the safety standards during a soccer match, it is considered an imperfect measure of heat load on athletes, as it is prone to underestimating the heat stress level," he explained.
"WBGT does not incorporate the most important factors specific to sports, i.e. specific metabolic heat production, specific clothing used by athletes and the effects of body movement on relative air velocity. Previous studies report that WBGT does not adequately reflect the additional thermal load that people experience when sweat evaporation is limited (e.g. by high air humidity or poor airflow). What is more, if we don't have in situ instrumental measurements of WBGT and have to mathematically model this index, the indirect estimates will give us the results with high uncertainty, thus not very reliable."
Football is not the only sport to have been affected by global warming and climate change. As things stand change of calendar seems to be the only way forward.