Somewhere around the 22-minute mark of every half at this World Cup, everybody is told to stop and have a drink. Three minutes, once in each half, every match, no exceptions.
FIFA has mandated it, pointed at the heat and humidity in America, and wrapped the whole thing in the language of player welfare. Hard to argue with player welfare, so let’s not. But we definitely should argue with everything around it.
The first problem is that the breaks are mandatory whatever the actual conditions. Mexico played at a comfy 20 degrees and still got marched off for a break. Another match was played at 16 degrees, and don’t even get us started about matches that are taking place at a stadium with a roof and working air conditioning.
If this were genuinely about temperature, you would set a threshold (maybe 25 degrees and above) and apply the break only when it is crossed. That rule, however, does not exist. A welfare measure that ignores the weather is not really a welfare measure.
If we look away from the absurdity of that, we need to stop at a more important point: What the breaks do to the actual football, and that is killing momentum.
Football is one of the most fluently flowing games in the world. Momentum surges. One team gets on top, pins the opposition back, they can feel a goal coming… And then there’s a whistle and everybody has to go grab a bottle for a few minutes. The side being pressed gets a free “half-time” to regroup.
We saw that with South Korea against Czechia. The Czechs were pushing, the break came, and the game went flat. Curacao sensationally equalised against Germany, but instead of building on that and piling more pressure on the European giants, they almost immediately had to sit through a cooling break that killed any signs of their momentum.
Now I’m not saying Curacao had Die Mannschaft on the ropes - the game finished 7-1 to the Germans in the end for a plethora of reasons - but you are noticing the pattern there, right?
Of course, like any new feature or addition to the rulebook, teams will eventually learn to use this. If you are hanging on, you slow the game down, running down the clock until the official calls for a break.
One small upside is that coaches are permitted to talk to their players during this break, which might eliminate all the mysterious cramps goalkeepers develop when the gaffer wants to have a word about the tactics.
It would be ironic though, if time-wasting is stopped by a full halt of play like in the NBA or the NHL. I’m taking these two leagues as a direct example because the new hydration breaks seem to be understood by everyone as a step towards the “Americanisation” of football. It splits the match into four quarters instead of two halves; quietly and unofficially, but effectively.
And of course, it uses something the NHL (and ice hockey all over the world) already bluntly calls a commercial break.
That’s what fans watching at home despise the most about these new moments, in the end. What’s announced as a measure to protect player safety is used to squeeze as much revenue as possible from the tournament. Without officially calling it a commercial break, it has been used as such by many broadcasters who love a guaranteed stoppage. Fox in the US even cut back from the commercials straight into live play it had already missed.
As one commenter on Reddit described this: It’s just a commercial with a water bottle in front of it.
For the people at the stadium, the three-minute break might fly by as a moment where you can check your phone or run to grab some refreshments (can’t quite expect to return to your seat in time, though); for all the people watching at home, the rhythm of the match is broken and mercilessly monetised.
The real worry is not the World Cup alone, but the precedent it sets. If player welfare in high temperatures is the official line, then good. If we end up having breaks like these midway through every half all the time because the extra commercial slot brings a nice chunk of money to the people running the show, then it’s a problem.
Maybe I’m being cynical and pessimistic, but it all looks less like a response to the heat and more like a revenue stream being tested.
The genie is already out of the bottle. It’s just a water bottle this time.
David Pávek has been working for Flashscore since 2022, originally as a Senior Editor before moving to the role of News Strategy Team Leader. He writes mainly about football, having covered the Champions League final on site and interviewing multiple current and former players. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.
