What’s more dangerous: Playing football in the afternoon between the temperature near 100 degrees Fahrenheit, or playing football when lightning falls eight miles away?
If you responded to the latter, congratulations – now you are eligible to join the FIFA Club World Cup Organizing Committee.
Whether you feel that FIFA’s approach is very strict for a serious season in the tournament or is very high, it is very clear: if anxiety is always a player and fan safety, the inequality is fruitless between anxiety on heat and anxiety over the severe weather. And this is an discrepancy that needs to be resolved before next year’s World Cup.
We have already seen a lot of real difficulties during the day -time kickoff on American soil in the recent tournament due to extreme hot weather.
Last year’s Copa fell during a game between Peru and Canada in Kansas City, a supporting referee Kansas City, between the temperature in the 90s and between humidity between the relatives of above 50%.
In the finals in Miami Garden, Florida, many fans require water and medical treatment, which required water and medical treatment between conditions and congestion control difficulties.
Generally, heat causes death compared to electrical attacks in the United States. If anything, the number of fathers related to heat can be reduced as they can introduce as heart or other health issues.
Perhaps the most crazy, it is also an easily solved problem. Major League soccer is almost completely gone from the summer kickoff during the day. This year, out of the 510 league sports, it was scheduled to begin at 6 pm local time between June 7 and August, which were defined as meteorological summer. Three of them were certainly in light Seattle.
There is an abundance of indoor places FIFA has ignored more or less. Good news: 2026 World Cup will include more of them, including five full coverage and four climate controls. But many clearly viable indoor sites were ever considered, including three 2025 concacaf gold cup host venue in miniapolis; Arlington, Texas; And Glandel, Arizona.
The minimum power policy arises out of anxiety for those involved in the policy of power – and, perhaps, they can file the lawsuits. But this is probably highly cautious, applying general guidance that was originally for the lack of sophisticated monitoring conditions.
NCAA events are the general standard 30/30 rule: If you hear a thunder within 30 seconds of the lightening flash, suspend the game for 30 minutes. This means that once the power can be small employees beyond coaches and players to avoid playing within six miles, and to apply in small-time events.
That standard is up to eight miles in MLS games and ongoing club World Cup, and even 10 miles in outdoor NFL Games. But with night kickoffs, MLS games can usually wait for severe weather that decreases due to temperature cooling. The NFL regular-season games are played completely outside meteorological summer.
FIFA should follow the model of Major League baseball instead, which includes no difficult-and-teej policy when implemented delay in lightening.
A 2023 analysis suggested that one of the 14 MLB games is played with electricity within a “unsafe” distance, as defined in the range of eight-miles. This is more than 170 games in a season.
But MLB also has generations of this issue and experience of dealing with stadium personnel, whose primary work is to monitor radar and weather conditions – rejecting the relative severity, speed and direction of a storm besides proximity.
With this general knowledge approach, the modern MLB has avoided electrical related injuries. If you search for electrical deaths related to electricity, you will find a wild story of Ray Caldwell, which was killed on the mound in 1919-let the radar go alone, before the arrival of the redies.
FIFA should follow that model, instead of implementing a rigorous rule, to hold a qualified meteorologist at each site empowered to make a fine, real -time decision. We see it regularly in the medical field. The same doctor who advises the average person to relax for two weeks can give a professional athlete a more fine guidance, which has a training worker to help manage risks while playing through injury.
To be clear, FIFA should not sacrifice players and fan safety for convenience. But should think about it Real Security – not its presence.
Forcing thousands of fans into the crowd, between a remote opportunity of electricity, shipping concourse or unwanted parking site may not be the safest option every time. Nor can athletes force the athletes to exclude themselves for two hours at the peak of the summer sun.
