The World Cup in Qatar keeps provoking outrage and breaking taboos.
Seven years before the 2022 tournament kicks off in the wealthy emirate, FIFA recommended a break with soccer tradition Tuesday - moving its marquee tournament to November and December instead of the usual June-July time slot.
A FIFA task force meeting in Doha agreed playing in the cooler months at the end of the year would protect players and fans from 104-degree Fahrenheit heat in Qatar's summer.
But the decision angered many in Europe because highly profitable leagues will be shut down for several weeks in the middle of their seasons.
"We expect the clubs to be compensated for the damage that a final decision would cause," European Club Association chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, a former Germany great, said in a statement.
The EPFL, a group representing Europe's top leagues, said the World Cup will cause "great damage" to domestic competitions when slotted into the broader Nov. 19-Dec. 23 period suggested by FIFA.
Next month's final approval for the switched dates seems to be a formality from a FIFA executive committee chaired by president Sepp Blatter, who has long insisted November-December is the only realistic option for the tournament.
Some of those same officials surprisingly chose Qatar in December 2010 despite the gas-rich country's lack of soccer tradition and vote-rigging claims implicating several voters and bid candidates.
A FIFA investigation into those allegations was closed only two months ago, concluding wrongdoing did not influence the victories for Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022.
FIFA voters back in 2010, several of whom have left FIFA while implicated in corruption cases, also ignored warnings from their own advisers about dangerous temperatures in Qatar. If Tuesday's meeting corrected that mistake - as Blatter often described the original dates in Qatar - it was achieved at a likely cost in future compensation payouts.
Fitting domestic seasons around a radically rescheduled World Cup would be "very chaotic," said Richard Scudamore, the CEO of the English Premier League, which holds broadcast deals worth billions of dollars annually.
The FIFA consultation process launched 17 months ago was widely seen as pre-judged by Blatter, even as Europeans detailed plans to kick off the World Cup in January, April or May 2022.
In a one-hour meeting Tuesday, only FIFA's preferred option was analyzed in detail before being sent for approval on March 19-20 in Zurich.
Blatter, who is an IOC member, has favored November-December to avoid clashing with the 2022 Winter Olympics.
FIFA said its task force chose the "most viable period."
"Given that the two bidding cities for the 2022 Winter Olympics - Almaty (Kazakhstan) and Beijing (China) - pledged recently to host the winter games from Feb. 4-20, 2022; that the month of Ramadan begins on April 2 in 2022; and that consistently hot conditions prevail from May to September in Qatar, the only remaining effective option is the November-December window," FIFA said in a statement.
The task force's recommendation won the support of Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee.
"It was always clear with the FIFA president and me that the clash between the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Winter Games would be a no-win situation," Bach said Tuesday in the Brazilian capital Brasilia.
"This recommendation is in line with this analysis. And I hope the FIFA executive committee will follow this recommendation, and this way creating a win-win partnership for both football and the Olympic winter sports."
While UEFA's support was muted, there was a more solid endorsement from another of FIFA's confederations - CONCACAF.
"Considering the welfare of our players and fans as the main priority, CONCACAF fully supports the recommendation made by the special task force," the governing body for North and Central America and the Caribbean said in a statement.
One positive is a tournament played late in the year in Qatar should offer some ideal conditions for players who dealt with humidity in some Brazilian cities last year, and near-freezing evening matches in South Africa in 2010. Both those tournaments were primarily played in the host nation's winter.
Qatar's tiny size offers another advantage over Brazil, where players excelled despite flying for hundreds of miles between matches in 12 host cities.
A tournament planned for as few as eight stadiums in and around Doha also has given FIFA the option of cutting the current 32-day tournament schedule by removing some rest days.
FIFA said it is looking at a shorter tournament, which could ease disruption for clubs and leagues by taking players away for fewer days.
There appear to be two options to stage a 2022 World Cup final likely to be seen by 1 billion people. If the latest, Friday, Dec. 23, is judged to be too close to Christmas, then the traditional Sunday option would be Dec. 18 - Qatar's national holiday.