FIFA told to take action over ‘stealth’ World Cup hydration break plan | Football | Sport

Gary Neville, Ian Wright and Roy Keane have added their voices to growing calls for FIFA to tackle the controversy surrounding hydration breaks during World Cup 2026 matches. The measure was first introduced at the Club World Cup last year to prevent players from becoming dehydrated. With the tri-nation North American tournament set for more scorching temperatures, the policy was retained.

However, with advertising breaks and tactical reshuffles now a regular occurrence, supporters are growing increasingly frustrated with the effect it is having on the game. By splitting the first and second halves of 45 minutes into four segments of 22.5 minutes each, comparisons have been drawn with American sports such as the NFL and NBA. Netherlands skipper Virgil van Dijk made his displeasure plain following their 2-2 draw with Japan, stating it’s “not really something that I like”.

Meanwhile, supporters and pundits alike are uniting in their opposition to the ‘stealth advertising’ that has emerged as a consequence of the stoppage in play. Though originally conceived to safeguard player welfare, it has handed broadcasters yet another opportunity to commercialise matches that already attract millions of viewers worldwide.

Speaking on Sky Sports’ The Overlap show, Manchester United icons Neville and Keane agreed with England hero Wright that the hydration break has been “blatantly” misused. Neville went further, urging FIFA to ‘stamp’ on the matter after observing head coaches exploit the three-minute window as a tactical timeout.

“I think FIFA are going to have to act quite quickly now,” Neville said. “I think if it’s a drinks break, there is going to have to be an element of: the coaches have got to stay on the bench, you can’t bring tactics boards out. I think there was one game they actually had a screen where they showed a set-piece! And then there was a tactics board up.

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“[It’s] effectively a mini-half-time, four quarters. I am surprised it’s not been stamped on pretty quickly, and I think it is a stealth advertising break.” Responding to Neville, Wright added: “There’s nothing stealth about it, it’s blatant.”

Keane argued that the product of football has been affected greatly, to the extent that people are switching off from the game altogether during the breaks. “They’ve covered it by saying it’s a hydration break. But even that, people will have different arguments about why they love different sports,” the Irishman said.

“We love football because of the pace of the game. You don’t want to go to the toilet, you might miss something! Other sports you go, ‘listen we can go out, we might not miss much’. But these breaks… what it’s doing, it’s stopping the flow of the game, the momentum; teams are losing momentum, sometimes they’re gaining. And you’re kind of doing that anyway with goalkeepers going down.

“And the problem is the other night the weather was lovely. It was a lovely cool evening, particularly the second half, and the game you were thinking ‘there’s a bit of momentum, you can smell something here’.

“And sometimes it comes on the back of a player being injured, so you’ve waited two or three minutes for a player to get treatment, the game kicks off and they go ‘oh no, we have a hydration break’.

“It’s stop/start, loads of little petty fouls. But these drink breaks… before the competition, I was saying ‘do you know what, we have to look after the players, they’re not robots.’ I get all that. But there was a bit on the TV [in America] the other night, they called it the time-out. They classed it as a time-out. The game now is like four quarters.”