All of these factors are significant. Some observers have speculated that a change in dates could lead various entities — including the countries that lost out on the bid to host the 2022 World Cup — to seek legal action. Corporate partners with FIFA might take similar paths, opening the organization to serious liability. Would the Qatari organizers indemnify FIFA against potential legal problems? “We don’t know anything about that,” Gulati said. “But obviously that is important to know.”

Many of the European leagues have come out against a move to winter because of the havoc it would cause with league schedules. The United States would not have that issue (Major League Soccer’s season runs from spring to fall), but that does not mean there would not be conflicts with a switch to a tournament in November. In just one example, Fox and Telemundo bid about $1 billion to broadcast the World Cup in the United States in 2018 and 2022. The expectation was that those tournaments would be played in the summer.

“There is another rather important sport that plays in the United States in the fall,” Gulati said. “How does a move affect us trying to promote the game if we’re up against the N.F.L. or college football now? That’s a reality we have to consider. And it’s just one of a hundred things like that which need to be considered.”

Blatter and Platini, among others, seem to feel otherwise. Platini has taken public digs at the English officials questioning the logistics of a switch, chirping that “we respect your calendar for 150 years — for one month in 150 years you can change.” Blatter appears uninterested in dissenting opinions, noting in an interview with the Web site Inside World Football that his organization is “the owner of the FIFA World Cup” and adding that he thinks “it is high time that Europe starts to understand that we do not rule the world anymore.”

At this point, it seems all but certain that the World Cup will be staged in Qatar. A change in nations is unlikely, and while there are human rights concerns with Qatar — just as there are with the 2014 Olympics and the 2018 World Cup in Russia — that is not the main problem of the moment.

Gulati, who was part of the failed bid from the United States to host in 2022, acknowledged that losing to Qatar stung. “It was a significant setback, personally and professionally and for our federation,” he said. Still, he said he was not interested in looking back. “I am in a different role now,” he said. “There is a different question now.”

That question is simply when. Summer or winter? Winter or summer? It is a switch that makes all the difference, and that is why Gulati wants a little more time. Not years, he said. Maybe just a few months. A few months for a tournament that isn’t for nine years. Even coming from FIFA’s loudest critics, that hardly sounds unreasonable.