What could be more dangerous: playing football in the midday sun in the middle of the temperatures at 100 degrees Fahrenheit, or playing football when there is eight thousand distance?
If you answered the latter, congratulations – you are now qualified to join the organizing committee of the FIFA club World Cup.
Whether you think that the FIFA approach on bad weather in the tournament is too strict or too jaded, this is clear: if the concern is always the safety of players and fans, the disparity between the concerns about heat and concerns in serious weather is absurd. And it is a gap that must be resolved before next year’s World Cup.
We have already seen extreme hot weather causing very real difficulties in recent tournaments on American soil during day -to -day kicks.
At the American COPA of last year, an assistant referee collapsed in a match between Peru and Canada in Kansas City, Kansas, in the mid -90s and relative humidity greater than 50%.
During the final in Miami Gardens, Florida, many fans were seen requiring water and medical treatments in the midst of stifling conditions and difficulties in controlling crowds.
More generally, the heat is much more likely to cause death than lightning strokes in the United States. If anything, the number of heat-related deaths can be underestimated because they can present themselves as heart or other problems.
Perhaps the most exasperating, it is also an easily solved problem. Major League Soccer has moved almost entirely from the day’s summer kicks. Of 510 championship games this year, only seven had to start before 6 p.m. local time between June and August, defined as meteorological summer. Three of them were with resolutely soft Seattle.
There is an abundance of interior sites that FIFA has more or less ignored. The good news: the 2026 World Cup will understand more, including five with full coverage and four with climate control. But several interior sites obviously achievable have never been taken into account, including three Gold de la Concacaf 2025 reception sites in Minneapolis; Arlington, Texas; And Glendale, Arizona.
At least, Lightning policy arises from the concern of people involved – and perhaps the proceedings they could deposit. But it is probably too cautious, applying general councils which were initially intended for situations without sophisticated surveillance.
The standard for NCAA events is the 30/30 rule: if you hear thunder within 30 seconds following a flash, suspend the game for 30 minutes. This aims to avoid the game once lightning is less than six miles, and being enforceable during smaller-scale events where there can be few staff beyond coaches and players.
This standard was refreshed up to eight miles in MLS matches and the current club World Cup, and even 10 miles in the outdoor matches of the NFL. But with night kicks, MLS games can usually wait for violent times that decrease as the temperatures fresh. The matches of the regular NFL season are fully played outside the meteorological summer.
FIFA should rather follow the model of the major baseball league, which does not include any hard and rapid policy on the implementation of lightning delays.
An analysis of 2023 suggested up to a game on 14 mlb is played with lightning at a “dangerous” distance, as defined by the radius of eight miles. It’s more than 170 games per season.
But the MLB also has generations of experience by dealing with the problem of the problem and the stage whose main work is to monitor radar and meteorological conditions – depending on the gravity, speed and direction of a storm in addition to proximity.
With this common sense approach, the modern MLB avoided injuries linked to lightning. If you are looking for MLB deaths linked to lightning, you will find the wild story of Ray Caldwell, which was struck on the mound in 1919 – before the advent of the radio, not to mention the radar.
FIFA should follow this model, placing a qualified meteorologist in each place authorized to make nuanced and real -time decisions rather than enforce a rigid rule. We see it regularly in the medical field. The same doctor who advises the average person to rest for two weeks could give more nuanced advice to a professional athlete who has training staff to help manage the risks while playing an injury.
To be clear, FIFA should not sacrifice the safety of players and fans for convenience. But that must think of real Safety – Not its appearance.
Forcing thousands of fans in crowded and stifling competitors or unaccomposed parking lots in the middle of a chance from Lightning cannot be the safest choice each time. Nor not to force athletes to practice for two hours at the top of the midday summer sun.
