In August last year, Fifpro (the international players’ union) presented the results of a study carried out with its Portuguese counterpart and the country’s football federation on how extreme heat affects athletes.
On that occasion, he reinforced a previously made recommendation to FIFA that it modify its guidelines to protect the health and performance of players.
In May, a month before the start of the World Cup, a group of 21 experts from around the world published an open letter to FIFA on the topic.
Professionals and researchers in the areas of sports medicine, public health, performance and climate science said, in short, that the guidelines for heat from the body that governs world football were inadequate and exposed World Cup athletes to risk.
With the tournament underway, the two mandatory hydration breaks (of three minutes each) became one of the biggest controversies of this edition, provoking much criticism (from coaches, players and fans) and some praise (from coaches and athletes).
Estimates indicate that the biggest gain appears to be commercial – in total there will be 208 new advertising windows, as the World Cup will have a total of 104 games.
By opting for the novelty, FIFA ignored both athlete representatives and scientists.
When it announced the mandatory “cooling break” for the World Cup in December, the organization noted that the game calendar had been designed to “minimize travel for teams and fans, maximize rest days between matches for all teams and allow the largest global audience possible to follow their teams in different time zones.”
He informed that “this complex process” involved a “technical analysis of all headquarters” (including average temperatures and air conditioning infrastructure) and debates between different areas of the entity, including “medical area, transmission and broadcasting and ticket sales”.
“There is no need for hydration breaks in all games in closed spaces with thermal control or in those where the temperature does not exceed 26°C or 28°C. These breaks change the pace of the match. They should only be adopted when strictly necessary for safety and performance reasons,” he told Sheet American physiologist Douglas Casa, professor emeritus in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Connecticut and one of the signatories of the open letter to FIFA.
For him, FIFA’s parameter (excluding the mandatory two stops established during the World Cup) for heat is “totally inadequate”: a three-minute break if the WBGT index exceeds 32°C. WBGT is the acronym in English for Wet Bulb Index Globe Thermometer, which estimates the combined effects of temperature, humidity, wind and solar radiation on the human body.
Originally developed to protect the US Marine Corps against heat-related illnesses and deaths during training, it has become an international reference on the subject.
With adaptations (athletes do not wear military clothing), the WBGT safety limits are: 25°C for very intense effort, 26°C for intense effort, 28°C for moderate effort, 30°C for light work and 33°C at rest.
“The ideal would be something around 26°C or 28°C. Furthermore, for the break to be really effective, it needs to last a little longer than 3 minutes, between 5 and 6 minutes”, says Casa, who is executive director of the Korey Stringer Institute, a center at the University of Connecticut dedicated to health in sports.
He also suggests ensuring that all locker rooms are fully equipped with cooling systems and not scheduling games in places like Miami for 5pm or 6pm, times when there is still a significant radiant heat load – instead scheduling them for 8pm or 9pm.
“I see no action from FIFA in relation to the concerns raised in the letter. The three-minute hydration break was introduced before our letter and is not in line with what was suggested in it,” he told Sheet climatologist Ivana Cvijanovic, researcher at IRD (Institute for Research for Development, in its French acronym) and also a signatory of the document.
According to her, if FIFA adopted a more reasonable limit for postponing WBGT games –28°C, for example, as the International Cycling Union does, instead of the current 32°C–, “these pauses could possibly be avoided. Ideally, such decisions and recommendations would be based on real data, allowing us to verify the best limits and also the effectiveness of the pauses.”
Cvijanovic touches on another nerve, also mentioned in the letter.
“Ideally, football would stop contributing to the problem it faces. Accepting sponsorship from the fossil fuel industry makes the sport complicit in the situation. Secondly, we need to face the harsh reality that current safety limits are excessively high and need to be reduced. And if this results in the exclusion of certain locations during the summer, that is the price to pay for the health of the players even if those locations are precisely where much of the sponsorship comes from.”
Fifpro referred the report to a 2023 scientific article co-signed by the entity’s medical director, Vincent Gouttebarge – the same person who conducted the study in Portugal – on mitigating the effects of extreme heat in football matches, which includes 11 recommendations, including that a WBGT index above 26°C (or ambient temperature above 30°C) should justify pauses and a WBGT index above 28°C (or ambient temperature above 36°C) should lead to the delay or postponement of matches until conditions for players, officials and fans are safer.
Faced with criticism, FIFA president Gianni Infantino defended the measure.
“Until the last second of the match the players attack. Maybe not, but maybe it’s also a little thanks to that little break. We’ve never seen 90 minutes in a tournament like this played with such intensity,” he said.
“Maybe the coach can reevaluate certain situations, correct certain mistakes. The players rest a little and come back full steam ahead. Well, is that necessarily bad? Maybe it’s good.”
Regarding the commercial purpose of the breaks, Infantino said that FIFA is not making extra money because the contracts were signed before the decision to introduce the hydration breaks.
There is, however, the possibility that broadcasters who hold the broadcasting rights choose which advertisements to show, and not just from FIFA’s partners.
