Sean Rameswaram

How did hydration breaks do the almost impossible?

Roger Bennett

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."

Sean Rameswaram

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.

Roger Bennett

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?

Sean Rameswaram

Does that mean that coaches and players like them, or are they complaining too?

Roger Bennett

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.

Sean Rameswaram

Do you think they'll keep them around?

Roger Bennett

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.