FOOTBALL


The competitions team at FIFA decided very early that the qualifying competitions and confederation


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tournaments should take priority when the playing of games resumed


now been moved to February 2021.” “One of the hardest jobs at FIFA recently has been for the team who controls the international calendar deciding who would play when. The competitions team at FIFA decided very early that the qualifying competitions and confederation tournaments should take priority when the playing of games resumed. Whilst a plan has started to take shape for 2021 and beyond, the full impact from the COVID-19 crisis will be felt for several years, with many not expecting football normality to be back until 2023 at the earliest.” “As it stands, I’m receiving updates from


the FIFA Bureau of Council who are the body within FIFA responsible for rubber- stamping all football related decisions. The Bureau will have received recommendations from the various project teams who manage the tournaments advising the best way forward. As you can imagine, this is a very involved process which relies on all six confederations assistance with the date


For us as the pitch team, in an odd way it helped as it created eighteen months plus build-up, which allows pitch projects in both


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countries that had been impacted by the pandemic to be completed


Alan working from his home office 50 PC February/March 2021 Al Gharafa stadium planning.”


Whilst the overall logistics for hosting a tournament have remained next to impossible, making sure pitches will be ready when the time comes has remained Alan’s issue. Working from his home office, he has regularly spoken to colleagues in Qatar, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Japan, Peru, Indonesia and the United States.


Having a network of consultants and contacts in these countries has already gone a long way to keeping preparations on track. An essential factor for Alan was not losing any progress made for the original tournament dates while trying, where possible, to take the first steps in other countries. “To ensure conditions were safe enough for youth tournaments to go ahead, FIFA decided to move them all into 2022. This was the year when the next editions of the U17 and U20 Women’s World Cups were due to be held anyway, so the simple part of


the decision was to offer the 2020 hosts the next edition of both tournaments. India accepted the 2022 edition of the Women’s U17 World Cup and Costa Rica the U20 edition.”


“For us as the pitch team, in an odd way it helped as it created eighteen months plus build-up, which allows pitch projects in both countries that had been impacted by the pandemic to be completed. This was more of a bonus in India where several training sites were being built as new. All the work that has already been done by our consultants, iTurf Management and Labosport, is still relevant and we can still work on that.”


“My main part in this was to extend the planning schedules and amend the budgets to take in the additional eighteen months to the new dates. We had already built the schedules, so extending was reasonably straightforward. We also had established counterparts on the ground in all countries who were working with our consultants, so


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