'Changes the identity of football' - World Cup hydration breaks are protecting players, frustrating coaches and turning soccer into a four-quarter game

 Hydration breaks are mandated at every single game of the 2026 World Cup, which has led to mixed reactions from coaches, players and fans alike.

About 30 seconds into a hydration break during the second half of England’s opening World Cup fixture against Croatia, the employees at Dallas Stadium realized they needed to change something.

The boos from England fans were cacophonous. Twenty minutes of fluid play from the Three Lions had been broken up. The fans were making their disdain known. So, stadium staff did what they could, and absolutely blasted “Mr Brightside” around the cavernous arena. Suddenly, all of the bad stuff was forgotten in a boozy singalong.

Yet it also broke up England’s momentum. For the first 20 minutes of the period, they had blown Croatia away. After that, the intensity dropped a little. What seemed on track to be a 6-2 win, ultimately ended in a 4-2 one, with a nervy patch in between. Such is the trade-off of these hydration breaks.

Fans have booed them loudly. The reaction from TV watchers at home is mixed. Managers, it seems, have a love-hate relationship with them. And FIFA have stressed their importance and fairness. More than anything, though, they have become yet another talking point in this most chaotic of World Cups.

"I think that it interrupts and changes the identity of a football match much more than I thought. I had hydration breaks before when it was really, really hot and needed, but they were shorter," Thomas Tuchel said in a press conference prior to England’s group game with Ghana.

'Absolutely, they're necessary'

It has not been uncommon to hear managers refer to hydration breaks during the World Cup. It is a question asked in almost every press conference, in some way or another. Many use it as a recognizable point in the game - basically a mini-half-time. One TV broadcast in the UK referred to a period in the second half of a game as the “third quarter.”

Basically, the idea is that hydration breaks are needed to give players a chance to refuel in long, arduous, high-intensity games. They last three minutes in each half, and are being deployed at every single game across the tournament, regardless of stadium location and weather conditions. FIFA announced them in December after what was effectively a dry run at the Club World Cup last year.

And this has been coming for a while. Hydration breaks are not necessarily a new concept. They were first introduced at the 2014 World Cup, and were mandated for when temperatures exceeded 32 degrees Celsius (about 90 degrees Fahrenheit) In those situations, they make complete sense.

“Absolutely, they're necessary. It's a chance to break up the long play and get some hydration in. We're 70 percent water, and almost all that water is in our cells. If we become dehydrated, we think, ‘Oh, it's our blood that goes dehydrated.’ That's a little bit true, but if our cells and our muscles become dehydrated, they're not going to function as well. That can lead to cramps, and that can lead to all kinds of problems. Overheating is really, really serious,” Chris Minson, Kenneth and Kenda Singer Professor in Human Physiology at the University of Oregon, told GOAL.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a manager who doesn’t agree with that sentiment in theory. Some coaches have given their support to them at this point. Others have voiced concern at past tournaments in the States, not least PSG manager Luis Enrique, who was frighteningly honest about the heat in Pasadena, California, during last year’s Club World Cup.

"The teams are suffering. In terms of play, it's impossible to perform at a very high level for 90 minutes," Luis Enrique said.

More complex than 'heat'

However, determining when, exactly, hydration breaks are needed comes down to more than just heat. Hydration breaks, in theory, should be calculated based on Wet Bulb Global Temperature (WBGT), which takes into consideration temperature and humidity. And it's there when the real need for hydration breaks can be calculated.

"To simplify it, say if it's sunny and it's humid and there's, and it's hot, you're going to have a high WBGT, and that's going to increase risk," Minson explained.

A combination of both humidity and heat, in fact, can be outwardly dangerous. The body, in effect, starts to shut down.

"We've got these conditions where we are going outside of what humans can tolerate for long, playing it at intense levels. When it's humid, we can't evaporate, our sweat is dripping off us. If your sweat does not evaporate, you're not dissipating heat. And then you're losing all that fluid, plus you're dehydrating your cells and then you start having problems," Minson said.

USMNT manager Mauricio Pochettino stressed that, in certain situations, there is no other alternative, though, after playing an early-afternoon game in Seattle.

"I think it was necessary," he said. "It was really hot and it was good to have the water to help both teams in recovery."

It's hard to argue with the science there. FIFPro, the international soccer players' union, has used similar data to advocate for the usage of cooling breaks in conditions when the WBGT goes north of 28 degrees Celcius.

'People have been playing soccer in those conditions for years'

That seems a no-brainer. Yet the challenges come when conditions aren't so adverse. When England played Ghana in Boston, the WBGT hovered between 18 to 21 degrees Celsius over the course of the game. It was a cloudy, spitty day in Foxborough, Massachusetts - a remarkably English summer day, in fact. Scientifically, there was little sense in having a hydration break. Yet in the 22nd and 67th minutes, the referee called for the players to shuffle over to the sidelines, regardless.

"Do I think a hydration break is needed if it's 82 degrees, and it's raining, or it's not very sunny? No. I mean, people have been playing soccer in those conditions for years, decades, and whatnot, and being totally fine," Minson said.

It gets even more contentious during games that are held indoors, in climate-controlled stadiums that are protected from the sun. Those places - Dallas, Atlanta, Los Angeles, to name a few - have quite literally been designed to ensure that American Football teams are able to play without worrying about heat.

Yet the line from FIFA is that there should be standardization across all games. Hydration breaks, then, are a World Cup wide proposition, regardless of where the game is being held.

“What matters even more to us is ensuring that all teams, in every match, are playing under the same conditions," FIFA President Gianni Infantino said.