The November and December 2022 slot favoured by Blatter and his secretary general, Jérôme Valcke, remains “the most likely option because it avoids a clash with the Winter Olympics and takes in two international breaks so would cause marginally less disruption.”(1) That time-frame is the most likely to be chosen as the alternate date for the World Cup, so there would be no clash with the Winter Olympics and the ICC.  As far as the national championships are concerned, there should be no worries there. If indeed the World Cup is played in November-December, then the national federations would just have to enter the winter break a bit earlier than it was scheduled. This would of course mean that the championships would last a bit longer in summer, but this shouldn’t be considered a problem. The summers in most of the countries around the globe are less harsh than Qatar’s, so the players wouldn’t have any problems with this. If we were to talk about countries from the Middle East and regions alike, they could play games more often during the year, start the whole championship earlier or a combination of the two. Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, the chairman of the European Club Association, which represents the top teams, clearly thinks it would not pose too much of a problem to his clubs having said “It is probably better to play it in winter.”(2)  In the end, there are a lot of possibilities to juggle around this sort of situations and have both a great World cup and successful national championship, while maintaining a spotless relationship with the ICC.  (1) Owen Gibson “ World Cup 2022: Sepp Blatter paves way for winter tournament in Qatar”, The Guardian, 3 October 2013   (2) “Qatar World Cup 2022: Top clubs 'open' to winter tournament”, BBC, 10 September 2013