Will Qatar Have To Change Soccer Rules to Accommodate World Cup in Desert?

Can the 2022 Qatar World Cup hold outdoor soccer matches in one of the world's hottest places and keep its green promises? Questions have already been raised about designs for carbon-neutral stadiums. Now Qatar is having to deny reports the stadiums may get too hot to support 45-minute halves of soccer:

Engineer Michael Beavon said at a conference in London on Wednesday that FIFA had a "forward-thinking" backup plan to divide matches into thirds, giving players more time to rehydrate if stadium temperatures rose above 84 degrees.

Qatari officials responded that the claims by Beavon, a director of Arup Associates, were "without any foundation."

As Barry Petchesky writes at Deadspin, "With all the Ts crossed, the Is dotted, and the money counted, FIFA is seemingly only now realizing that it gets really fucking hot in Qatar." And considering the Earth is warming at about 0.3 degrees F per decade, it'll be even hotter by the time 2022 rolls around.