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Football League to continue during Qatar World Cup

The Football League is set to defy FIFA and continue with the bottom two divisions of English football during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

Football League chief executive Shaun Harvey is looking forward to build on the rise in popularity of the bottom divisions in the League and plans to provide English football fans their only taste of live football during the five weeks of the competition in November and December of 2022.

"First of all, we are disappointed the World Cup is being played during the season," said Harvey. "We have asked some questions for clarification as to what leagues would or would not be eligible to continue with a view to looking at all the options and taking them to the clubs in due course.

"We want to be making a decision on whether the Football League continues during the World Cup four or five years in advance, so that if they are signing players who are potentially going to play in the World Cup they know the problems they will face.

"We will be asking the FA to be making enquiries of FIFA on our behalf and we would expect a relatively quick response.

"The questions ultimately are not going to be that hard but if the clubs decided to play on, we have got to know if we would be able to broadcast games during that period to meet our other commitments.

"League One and League Two clubs continue playing in international week - it is only an extension of that principle that we would be looking at. We could stop the Championship and run League One and League Two."

Last weekend Bristol City stood shoulder to shoulder with Barcelona and Bayern Munich when the Johnstone's Paint Trophy success of a team currently ranked 45 in the English pyramid system against Walsall, 60th, was watched by the third biggest attendance in Europe.

"The 72,000 that turned up at Wembley for the Johnstone's Paint Trophy shows the strength of that competition and our clubs," said Harvey.

"Crowds are up by five per cent - seven per cent in the Championship - and we had a very strong show in the cup competitions with Bradford in the quarter-finals, Reading in the semi-finals and Sheffield United in the semi-finals of the Capital One Cup. Our clubs have shown up well.

"And we are massively excited as we come into the business end of the season. Eight points between the top eight clubs in the Championships which makes it look like the most exciting finishes to the season ever. There is still everything to play for in virtually every division going into the last seven or so games of the season."

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