Last week it was reported that the 2034 FIFA World Cup in Saudi Arabia is being moved forward by half a year, to the winter of 2035. According to Norwegian NRK's rights buyer Espen Olsen Langfeldt, who was the one who revealed the plans, it is not enough to move the championship to the late autumn of 2034 to avoid the worst heat, as was done in Qatar 2022. Fifa wants to move the championship to the beginning of 2035 because Ramadan occurs in November 2034.
The question of how Ramadan should be handled has divided top football for years. In the Premier League, since a handful of years ago, nutrition breaks have been applied to practicing Muslim players when darkness falls and the fast is broken in the middle of a match. In German and Spanish football, the situation has been handled on a case-by-case basis and according to the flexibility of the referee in question.
In France, where the idea of a public sphere free of religious expression – la laïcité – has deep roots, no breaks are allowed at all. Allsvenskan referees are mandated to make shorter game interruptions for iftar, the breaking of the fast, and then agree with both teams about this in advance.
If the information about a postponed WC 2034 is true, we will soon find out. But the tendency for religion to gain more and more space in football can be seen in several places.
Before the football European Championship 2021, I interviewed the midfielder Viktor Claesson, who grew up in the mission church, and asked what it was like to be a believer in a football world where this is more the rule than the exception in many places except in northern Europe. He replied, somewhat awkwardly, that it's not something he thinks about when he plays football.
Five years later, the Swedish national team is overflowing with God-fearing players. And on the contrary, they seem to think a lot about God when they play football.
Yasin Ayari attracted attention when he scored against Tunisia in this summer's World Cup and celebrated by falling into the Muslim prayer position.
This is what blue-yellow Islam can look like, said Joel Halldorf, theologian and himself free-church, in Expressen. In his own blog, he later stated that this summer's FIFA World Cup was the most religious ever played, with examples of a wide variety of prayer times and religious celebrations in several participating teams.
But with the exception of Ayari's celebration - and unlike the populist right's eternal alarm about an imminent Islamization of Sweden - Christianity is completely dominant in the Swedish national team that gathers today to face Bosnia-Herzegovina and Poland in the Nations League.
Alexander Isak, Dejan Kulusevski, Lucas Bergvall, Besfort Zeneli, Roony Bardghji, Ken Sema, Anthony Elanga, Noel Törnqvist - they have all told about or shown their Christian faith on or off the field. Their social media accounts are filled with Bible quotes for good and bad.
These days Fotbollsmorgon releases the podcast "Football and religion" which delves into the subject and among other things asks the question: Are footballers more religious these days, or are they just more open about their beliefs?
There were certainly players who prayed to higher powers, but it was not a topic of conversation in the dressing room, says Anders Limpar in the documentary about his time in the national team. In Serie A, however, where Limpar spent one season at Cremonese before signing for Arsenal, all the players went to church before matches on Sundays.
The comparison is interesting, because Catholicism is on the decline among Generation Z in both Italy and Spain compared to previous generations. In Serie A and La Liga, the religious expressions on the field now mostly come from foreign players, often revivalist South Americans or practicing Muslims from Africa.
In the Premier League, where the religious trend is perhaps strongest in northern Europe, so many (often free-spirited) players can now be seen displaying their faith that the Spectator magazine last year called the development "The unstoppable rise of Christianity in football".
The immigration waves of recent generations in Europe are, of course, an explanation for the return of religion. But also ethnically Swedish teenagers are increasingly turning to the church.
In Graham Potter's dressing room, most of the tone-setting players are now believers in one way or another. I will leave it unsaid whether this places new demands on the coach. But more than one hardened sports reporter will have to refresh the memories from the confirmation if you want to understand who Sweden's new football stars really are.
