The World Cup is in full swing, and the vibes are mostly positive! Scottish tourists drank Boston dry, Mexico lifted a 40-year curse, and African teams have had a historic showing.
But there is one pesky little thing that fans REALLY don’t like: hydration breaks, which are a new addition to the tournament this year. Players have complained that they break up the rhythm of the game, and fans believe they are nothing but a cash grab, offering broadcasters more time for commercials.
Roger Bennett, founder of the soccer podcast and media network Men in Blazers, told Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram that the hydration-break rule has “done something that I thought was almost impossible in the football world, which is to unite the entire planet in anger against its very existence.”
Bennett spoke with Sean about where the hydration breaks came from, why everyone hates them so much, and what makes the World Cup such a special event anyway.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
How did hydration breaks do the almost impossible?
Football is, at its heart, a very simple game. It is two halves of 45 minutes. That is the way it is. It’s the way it’s always been. Crucially, it’s the way it is at the elite professional level, and it is the way it is at an under-seven game in Alaska.
It’s pretty critical to football that the game at all levels is exactly the same. That is, until the World Cup came to North America this summer. This is one of the hottest in global football history. And so Gianni Infantino, the head of FIFA, just imposed a new rule where they would have hydration breaks, which he said was part of a focused attempt to ensure the best possible condition for players. He said they’re purely a sporting matter.
Every half, it breaks in the middle now for an extended period, four minutes and 20 seconds per game. And what it does on Fox in America, as the players amble to the side, they now just talk about it as if it’s a routine part of the game. They say, ‘Oh, we’ve hit the water break! And then boom! We’re in commercials.’
The American football fans might be saying, what’s the big deal? There are constant commercials when I’m watching a game. But this has really triggered the football purists out there.
Football is a working-class game. Football is a game of fan devotion, connection. Football is deeply historic and there’s an authenticity to it. The heat is terrible in the United States, but many of these stadia are indoors, are air conditioned.
You have this kind of ridiculous, surreal situation where footballers are taking a break in an air-conditioned stadium, ambling over to the side, and what it’s done is give coaches essentially a timeout in the middle of the game. You have players having a break. Exhausted players who are being run down by a superior opponent have a chance to catch their breath. We’ve seen game after game be utterly transformed by the momentum shift.
When you see the figures that the broadcasters are making — said to be $250 million in terms of the commercials that they’re running in those slots — it’s a very odd moment in time where people are wondering: What is this? Why is this? And is this just for this World Cup or in dismal England in rainy November, will the Premier League start to take water breaks and we’ll cut to Coca-Cola commercials?
Does that mean that coaches and players like them, or are they complaining too?
Almost everybody hates them. A lot of the players talk about how hard it is to find a rhythm in a game, and then you’re stopping and going over to the sideline.
By the way, at the beginning, the water break was just a water break and they would come back and often Fox at the beginning was caught in commercial and they’d come back to the game and it would be on, and people would lose their minds. And so what they’ve done, they’ve made it even more American. It’s almost like a TV timeout in the NFL now where the official keeps the players on the sideline until they know the commercials are run and then they let them on.
Anthony Robinson, the US player, said he wanted to walk back onto the field and get back into his position. And one of the officials was like, ‘No, sorry, the commercials are still playing. Stay where you are.’
A couple of the coaches have admitted that they won games because they were able to make complicated tactical changes and communicate. Germany were playing Curaçao, who just tied the game up — one of the most delirious moments of this World Cup. And the young German coach admitted afterwards that he was able to adjust to playing against the diamond midfield shape that he didn’t expect. And Germany ended up winning 7-1. If you watch the game it was like flicking over radio stations before the water break and after the water break.
Do you think they’ll keep them around?
This is the greatest fault line in football, Sean. I do not have prophetic powers, but ultimately the whole game of football is currently in a battle between its roots and the commercial imperative that comes from being as big as it is.
The Super Bowl and American sports in general are brazenly commercial. But 5 billion people watched the World Cup. Two hundred million people watch the Super Bowl. It is the last megaphone which is faintly audible around the world. And when you have something that big, it becomes deeply desirous to make as much money as you can out of it. And that’s the tension.
So this is about capitalism and the American version contra, perhaps, the European version.
This is a question about European vacation policies. And you sound like you may have been a European in a previous life.
Born to be an American, Sean, so I don’t know if I can answer what you’re asking, but go on.
I’ve been noticing the Scottish fans, the Norwegian fans, the Dutch fans just traveling from city to city to city. And I’ve wondered, how much vacation do these people have?
We’ve always joked that part of the reason that football has taken off in this nation is because Americans love an excuse to daytime drink and cut work. GDP plummets seriously in Europe during the World Cup, at an enormous clip. These fans, many of them sell houses. They sell off everything. They save for this. Remember, the World Cup’s every four years. That’s why it’s such a powerful experience.
It is the spine to my life. When I meet someone and they tell me they met me in 1997, my mind goes to the nearest World Cup, 1998, and I remember that so viscerally, and then I can locate myself in time and space and know exactly where I was. It’s the spine to millions of human beings’ lives. So it’s not a, ‘Should I go? Can I go?’ It really is a compulsion.
I think it’s been the joy of this World Cup. When you look back in 40 years, any World Cup you can name people. “Oh, that’s the Pele World Cup!” “Oh, that was a Maradona!” This one will be remembered probably for Messi just defying Father Time. Please god, for the United States going deep. But it will be remembered for the Scottish fans… The joy, their wonder, the openness, the love that they brought to our nation. So thank God they take the time that they do.
There is a funny story of a number of them, like being caught on camera at games and having their boss see them and being recalled to work. But I think the world is better for them cutting work, for the decrease in productivity, for the utter shamelessness in ditching their families, their occupational growth. And that’s the joy of the World Cup too, Sean.
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