Curaçao’s crew doctor fingers out ice-pack jackets to assist gamers settle down throughout a males’s soccer World Cup 2026 match in Kansas Metropolis, Missouri.Credit score: Robbie Jay Barratt/AMA/Getty
Twice every recreation, the World Cup 2026 hits pause. Drinks seem, adverts go up and followers boo. The soccer governing physique FIFA says that these ‘hydration breaks’ are about participant welfare: a response to rising temperatures and the rising threat of warmth exhaustion. However proper now, FIFA is lacking the mark, and dangers turning a sound thought right into a poor instance.
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I say this as a researcher who investigates the impact of warmth on well being and efficiency. Cooling breaks can work. The science is powerful. However they have to be executed correctly.
Put merely: cooling breaks must be pushed by heat-stress threat and designed round efficient cooling, not broadcast schedules or industrial pressures.
On the pitch, that precept is beginning to slip. Breaks that must be calibrated to environmental warmth stress appear to be tied to tv schedules and promoting incomes. Critics complain that the time meant for cooling is used for tactical directions, and gamers are receiving steering whereas standing within the solar moderately than within the shade.
FIFA’s medical tips are clear: cooling breaks are meant solely to forestall warmth sickness and must be used when environmental warmth stress exceeds an outlined threshold (a wet-bulb globe temperature of 32 °C).
However on this World Cup, there’s a spot between coverage and follow. Breaks seem in each match, no matter situations, even in climate-controlled stadiums. Though it might sound honest to deal with all video games in the identical method, this blanket method dangers undermining belief in heat-safety measures. If breaks are all the time used, no matter threat, they cease being significant and begin wanting like routine stoppages.
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Warmth exhaustion in athletes is frequent, however preventable. My collaborators and I’ve run managed experiments with contributors simulating 90-minute soccer matches in 40 °C warmth and 41% humidity. We examined totally different cooling approaches: passive breaks, lively cooling and longer restoration intervals. The distinction was stark. Quick in-game breaks utilizing ice-soaked towels and chilly drinks, mixed with a barely longer half-time pause, lowered core temperature and cardiovascular pressure significantly. Against this, breaks with out lively cooling supplied little measurable profit (H. A. Brown et al. J. Sci. Med. Sport 28, 491–497 (2025); H. A. Brown et al. Br. J. Sports activities Med. 58, 1044–1051; 2024).
It’s not the pause in play — it’s the way it’s used. If gamers aren’t actively cooling, warmth pressure stays an issue.
This isn’t only a downside for sport. It’s a problem for human well being. The identical rules apply to building staff on a sizzling constructing web site or agricultural staff in a area. Throughout these settings, the proof is constant: structured interventions that mix relaxation, hydration and lively cooling scale back physiological pressure and shield well being. Once they’re poorly designed or inconsistently utilized, the advantages won’t be felt.
That wider relevance is why getting this proper in soccer issues. World sport units the tone. When governing our bodies misapply science in extremely seen occasions, it dangers normalizing ineffective approaches. However there are constructive examples of heat-management methods. Some sports activities have moved past temperature thresholds to physiology-first, responsive administration of warmth stress. The purpose right here is flexibility, guided by science.
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In tennis, the Australian Open, for instance, makes use of a five-level heat-stress scale, which was developed with researchers from my centre. It combines physiological threat of warmth stress with environmental measurements, and the response is adjusted accordingly. That may imply something from implementing cooling measures courtside to suspending play. Since 2025, World Rugby has taken an analogous method, working with our centre to introduce evidence-based warmth tips that tailor interventions to each situations and particular person participant threat.