The biggest casualty of this year’s World Cup could end up being the game of football itself, and the damage could be permanent.
Two weeks in, there’s plenty for football fans to like and not to like about the 23rd edition of the FIFA World Cup. On the positive side of the ledger, many of the games have been excellent, Lionel Messi continues to boss the pitch despite his 39 years of age, and all three host teams, the US, Mexico, Canada, have qualified for the first knockout stage, which in this year’s enlarged edition involves 32 teams, rather than the usual 16.
My highlight of the tournament so far was watching 29th-ranked Ecuador beat four-time champions Germany in a 2-1 victory last night, thereby booking itself passage to the next round. By doing so, Ecuador became only the second Latin American side to beat Germany in the group phase of the World Cup, after Mexico. Watching grown men in the stands cry with joy is what the FIFA World Cup is all about — or at least should be.
#2026WorldCup — #Ecuador defeated Germany 2–1 to qualify for the Round of 32.
After the match, Ecuador head coach Sebastián Beccacece celebrated with the fans in the stands.pic.twitter.com/QiyVrhabP9
— Antifa_Ultras (@ultras_antifaa) June 25, 2026
The 2026 FIFA World Cup is also about making vast sums of money, much of which will be trousered by FIFA, which controls the tournament’s most valuable and scalable revenue streams. Despite its working class roots, football is the world’s biggest grossing sport and one of the most corrupted by corporate interests. And it’s getting a lot more corrupted during this World Cup.
There also appears to be no limit to the damage the Trump administration can inflict on the biggest sports show on Earth, as we warned a couple of weeks ago. Washington has already done serious harm through its petty, vindictive treatment of the Iranian national football side as well as its visa bans and deportations of football fans and referees.
The Iranian team has been barred from spending a single night on US soil, leaving it no choice but to fly, often large distances, to each game from its training base in Tijuana, and back again all on the same day. This puts the team at a huge disadvantage vis-á-vis its opponents. Iran has also had a goal disallowed in both of its first two games.
Yet despite this, Iran is still within a shout of qualifying for the next round, having drawn its first two games. If it was to pull that off, it would be a huge accomplishment. Meanwhile, Washington is stepping up its petty vindictiveness…
Here we go again. This is SO exhausting and I can’t even begin to imagine how mentally draining it must be for the Iranian squad.
It is long past time for other national teams to stand with Iran and speak up. This treatment is outrageous and deeply unfair. https://t.co/Yjt0UQldmL
— Leyla Hamed (@leylahamed) June 24, 2026
As NC reader Taufiq Al-Thauwry noted, with a twist of irony, in a previous comment, the appointment of the current FIFA CEO, Giovanni “Gianni” Vincenzo Infantino, in 2016 was meant to help smooth over the constant and credible charges of corruption made against FIFA under the Sepp Blatter “regime”:
Just seems such a sign of the times to go from the quaint and old-school corruption of bribery and things to supporting genocide, war, deporting referees, blocking visas, and forcing Iran to play in, but not stay in, the US after the host’s wild aggression.
The Cradle has dubbed the event, quite aptly, the “World Cup of Exclusion”:
Intrusive security screening, restrictive visa procedures, harsh immigration policies, and ticket pricing have all fueled criticism. International fans have struggled to obtain entry, while several participating delegations have faced extraordinary restrictions.
Alfred Archer, associate professor of philosophy at Tilburg University, tells The Cradle:
“It is very important to be aware of how the US government is using the World Cup as a showcase of US border power and political control. However, this issue cannot be easily separated from the fact that the World Cup is a global celebration of football, sport, and community.”
Disfiguring the “Beautiful Game”
However, the biggest casualty of this year’s World Cup could end up being the game of football itself. Barring a serious pushback from fans and players, the damage could even be permanent. The “beautiful game” has undergone sweeping changes, most of them unwelcome, mostly in the name of profit maximization, since this World Cup began. That this is occurring during a tournament hosted primarily by the US, where money does all the talking, is no coincidence.
The three-minute cooling breaks that occur at the 22nd and 67th minute of every half in the 2026 World Cup regardless of meteorological conditions represent a radical reconfiguration of the way the game is played, and one that has left most football coaches, players and fans severely unimpressed.
Paraguay coach Gustavo Alfaro was the latest to lambaste the so-called “hydration breaks”, calling for them to be used only in cases of extreme heat. From Reuters:
The straight-talking Argentinian, among the most outspoken figures at this World Cup, said football’s continuity was being threatened and cooling breaks should only be used in extreme conditions, with agreement from both teams.
“These are more than hydration breaks. I know this applies to everybody, but I like continuity. Football is continuity and continuity is broken,” he told a press conference that lasted close to an hour.
Alfaro vented his frustration on Sunday at the drinks breaks, saying they were for commercial interests, while accusing football’s business elite of hurting fans with eye-watering ticket prices in a sport played and followed primarily by the working classes.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino has defended cooling breaks, saying their usage was driven purely by sporting considerations.
Nobody is buying that. France coach Didier Deschamps tore into the stoppages in a television interview after the friendly they played on March 26, 2026, against Brazil in Boston, in which there was a three-minute pause in each period:
“It’s good for you as a TV network, to have an advertising break, but those three minutes change football completely. It doesn’t matter which team. If a team is enjoying a good spell, three minutes stop everything.”
Jürgen Klopp, the eloquent former Liverpool manager, has also launched a scathing attack on the cooling breaks:
Football is being held hostage by executives sitting in air-conditioned offices. These breaks are being presented as a shield for player welfare, a noble weapon against the heat. In reality, they are nothing more than a golden cage built for sponsors.
When I saw players standing around during cooling breaks while television timeouts dictated the rhythm of the match, I couldn’t help but ask myself: who is the World Cup really serving? The supporters? The players? Or the advertisers?
A World Cup match should flow like a river. Instead, we are building dams in the middle of it so commercials can be shown.
It’s dangerous for the spirit of the game. Football used to be the main event, but it now risks becoming background music for an advertising show.
It seems quite fitting that FIFA chose to announce the mandatory rehydration breaks at a meeting in Washington with global rights-holding broadcasters, who are among the largest beneficiaries of the rule changes. Privately, the sporting organisation had already distributed guidelines on broadcasts, reported The Athletic, which obtained the documents.
The World Cup is not the only major international footballing event to embrace cooling breaks over the past year. Conmebol, the governing body for football in South America, recently introduced a 90-second pause in each half of all matches in the two club tournaments it organises, the Libertadores and the Sudamericana.
For football bodies like FIFA and Conmebol as well as the broadcasters and global brands whose interests they primarily represent, the benefits are obvious. Cooling breaks represent a phenomenal money making opportunity for FIFA, whose advertising revenue represents one of the top three cash inflows, along with ticket sales and TV rights.
For broadcasters, particularly the Murdoch family’s FOX Sports and Sky Sports, they represent a perfect money-grabbing opportunity, as the Argentine geopolitical analyst Bruno Sgarzini broke down in a recent article for Canal Red (machine translated):
Fox Sports, for example, gave FIFA $485 million to secure television rights for most of the matches. With cooling breaks, the networks have two minutes and ten seconds to place advertising spots; that’s four for each break. With two breaks per game, that works out at roughly eight commercials per match. If you multiply that by 104 matches, we have 832 new commercials that would never have existed without the cooling breaks.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Fox charges $200,000 for a 30-second spot in group stage matches. If the US national team is playing, it goes up to $750,000. The figure is likely to rise as the tournament progresses. According to Sports Business Journal, Fox could make $250 million from the cooling break ads alone. If the average price rises to $400,000, the figure would reach $333 million with these ads alone. The channel would thus recover more than half of what it paid for the broadcasting rights [from the cooling breaks].
As for global consumer brands, they are delighted with the cooling breaks, which allow them to further expand their invasion of the minds and souls of football viewers. As El País reports, guaranteed income streams and expanded branding opportunities are just what TV broadcasters and the marketing departments of global corporations want. And those corporations would like the new four-quarter structure to remain in place long after this edition of the World Cup is over.
“It’s key,” says Mercedes [Blánquez, head of marketing and advertising at Movistar+], “that it be included in the schedules and advertising assets that licensees of TV rights can monetize, and that it helps them recoup the large investments in those rights.” FIFA and Conmebol have opened the way to a new way of selling soccer and playing it, and the World Cup will serve as a huge proof of concept.
Creeping Americanisation of World Football
The ultimate goal will be to have the same, or similar, changes introduced by the national football leagues in Europe and even the Champions League. Once that happens, the rest of the world will follow. There’s one major obstacle to this, however, as reader John A points out in the comments below — Europe’s cold winter:
[F]ootball is a winter game in most parts of Europe. Plus, thanks to floodlights and further encroaching TV scheduling rights, many games are played in the evening. Hydration breaks would be a nightmare for players forced to stand around for several minutes in cold temperatures.
What we are witnessing is the creeping Americanisation — as in corporate crapification (h/t John A) — of world football (aka soccer), a process that has been unfolding for well over a decade, at least since the FIFA-gate scandal of 2014.
If there is one thing US sports organisation bodies have perfected, it is the art of bombarding viewers with unwelcome commercials at every possible turn. In the NFL, each game has four quarters, two halves as well as time outs or injury time outs during series of plays (h/t Bugs). In total, the TV networks broadcast a whopping 20 commercial breaks containing more than 100 ads. Those ads take up an hour of time in all games, according to The Wall Street Journal.
None of this, of course, is news to most of our US-based readers. But it may be news to many of our readers from other parts of the world. As Sgarzini notes, many of the same US tycoons who dominate the American football, baseball and basketball leagues in the US are not just wielding outsized influence over this edition of the FIFA World Cup; they have also been quietly taking over global elite football, one league at a time:
For example, Arthur Blank owns the Atlanta Falcons football team and the Atlanta United soccer team of Major League Soccer (MLS). The Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which he runs by concession from the state of Georgia, hosts eight World Cup matches. Blank has influence at the US Soccer Federation, which is in charge of organising the World Cup, as he donated $50 million to build its national training centre. Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys NFL team, was able to convince FIFA to stage several key games at his AT&T Stadium. Lionel Messi, on the other hand, scored his thrilling hat-trick at the Kansas City stadium, which is owned by the Hunt brothers, owners of the Kansas City Chiefs, multiple NFL champions, and one of the most powerful families linked to oil and the Republican Party in the state of Texas.
These tycoons have established a business model of multi-use stadiums with more commercial breaks and exorbitant ticket prices. One that, according to a report by the CIES Sports Intelligence, a research and analysis division of CIES specialising in sports governance, policy and regulation, is moving into Europe’s elite football. U.S. capital, for example, owns or is a shareholder in 117 European football clubs. In eight years the figure has multiplied by almost five, since in 2018 the number was only 25. In total, they control more than half of the Premier League, more than a third of Italy’s Serie A and more than a quarter of France’s Ligue 1.
Seven of the fifteen clubs with the highest revenues in the world belong to American billionaires or private equity firms. This includes half of this year’s Champions League semi-finalists in Europe, including Stan Kroenke’s Arsenal and Atletico Madrid from the investment fund Apollo Global Management, led by Marc Rowan. The names of owners with a presence in American sports, such as baseball, basketball and American football, keep coming up: Manchester United’s Glazer family owns the Tampa Bay Buccaneers; Todd Boehly, in charge of Chelsea, manages the baseball team of the Dodgers and the Los Angeles Lakers of the NBA; and Liverpool’s John Henry controls the Boston Red Sox in the baseball league. The main reason for this expansion of US capital into football is financial: according to the Financial Times, “an NBA team is valued at 14 times its revenue, while a big European soccer team is valued at 4.2 times.” For Gerry Cardinale, of the RedBird Capital Partners fund, owner of AC Milan: “Entrepreneurs look at European football and say: this is the opportunity to buy a global entertainment asset at a discount.”
And that is all football is to owners of US capital: a global entertainment asset at a discount that is just waiting to be crapified. For their sake alone, world football, a sport whose structures and rules have changed surprisingly little since the establishment of English association football in 1863, is now undergoing a sweeping change that threatens to irrevocably alter its very nature.
Football, like many team sports, is a game of rhythm. If you take that away, you take away much of its essence. As the ever-irreverent coach of Uruguay’s struggling national team, Marcelo Bielsa, warns, the introduction of hydration breaks at this summer’s World Cup marks a “change of culture” which “adds nothing” to the sport.
Crapification for profit is an American pastime.
Hell yeah. Here in SC we even have a mini Me version as local tycoons have built an expensive new minor league baseball park–complete with skyboxes–to host a team nobody cares about. As with so much of what is happening in my town it’s all about the container rather than the contents. They used to call this civic boosterism. Sinclair Lewis may need a 21st c update with “Main Street 2–All About the Skyboxes.”
So how long before Musk gets into the action, buys a team and names it “X”?
Fireflies stadium in Columbia?
Simony, the American way
What we are witnessing is the creeping Americanisation — as in, “USonianisation” — of world football (aka soccer)
Enough of the euphemisms please, call it what it is – capitalist enshittification.
BTW football is a winter game in most parts of Europe. Plus, thanks to floodlights and further encroaching TV scheduling rights, many games are played in the evening. Hydration breaks would be a nightmare for players forced to stand around for several minutes in cold temperatures.
World Kickball vs American Violenceball.
The Hunger Games but played by millionaires and the participants mostly live.
One small note – there are no pauses in the middle of plays in the NFL. There can be time outs or injury time outs during series of plays. A play might be stopped by a time out, but the play will need to be completed so that the series of downs is finished. I’ve seen plays interrupted or even entirely skipped during broadcasts, and a shift to a commercial break, but it should not, in theory, happen. A play from the line of scrimmage doesn’t end until the ball is dead or the player holding the ball is down.
As an aside, watching the NFL outside the US on a pay streaming service is a slightly different experience in that the local affiliate commercials aren’t shown and the streamer puts up its own break video or a logo. In fact, when Dazn acquired the international NFL broadcast rights from a smaller specialist streaming firm a few years back, international fans were outraged that Dazn wasn’t showing the network commercials because the fans considered them an essential cultural component of the game. After a petition was launched for the return of the commercials, as well as a campaign on the socials, Dazn put the network commercials back in the streaming broadcasts.
Thanks for the correction, Bugs. Have amended the text with a hat-tip in your direction. That international American Football fans consider the network commercials an essential cultural component of the game speaks volumes about the culture of the game.
It speaks volumes about America and the contemptuous zombie throat hold its élites have on pretty much every aspect of life that used to make it worth living.
…fans considered (ads) an essential cultural component of the game…
Aspirational adoration, or a balanced look-in, or a source of derisive critique-
Probably all- and dim-sum. Why any individual would emulate or aspire to ‘Murica is beyond me.
Business, or Govies? Hell yeah.. we have quite the ‘model’.
I have to say, streaming Fox to get the soccer- has been illuminating to say the least. The tenor of the Fox programming, the culture, the MAGA/ Murdoch machine.
I still have never tucked in, never thought to give it any of my time, but to see snippets and promotional blurbs of what drives much of “American” culture, through that lens….
Hearts and Minds.
The Bombastic Bellicose Belligerents have the Floor these days, the wimpy loyal opposition is lost and adrift, from a diligent objective Fourth Estate on to ‘leadership’ and citizenry.
Long slow pendulum swing…. it seems post Trump 1 and Covid, many have chosen to not take the ride. Opt out.
Can one opt out of the Lemming Conga Line, or is that, too, another delusion?
I’ve been to two games in person. Loud music is played during the breaks, drowning out boos. What really boggled the mind is that the breaks occurred during games that are in climates controlled indoor stadiums.
As for US tycoons and soccer, they’ve been playing a very long game. The Hunts, Phil Anschutz, Kroenke, and Robert Kraft have been funding Major League Soccer since its inception after the 1994 World Cup. They propped up the league when it had to retrench and shut down teams (Tampa Bay Muntineers and Miami Fusion). MLS is now switching to a fall-spring calendar from spring-fall (i.e. no more summer games) to align with the player transfer windows. Player transfer fees are now significant profit center. Former MLS players now play for big teams in Europe and Mexico.
“In the NFL, each game has four quarters, two halves as well as time outs or injury time outs during series of plays . . . “
And replay time-outs. And “referee” time-outs.
I had season tickets for the Niners through the 80s, when the newer plethora of time-outs were starting to make attending the game in person something of a drag. We started to notice the signal from the sidelines that triggered these specious time-outs: a fella with a big, Day-Glo orange glove that he’d stick out to signal that the TV PTB wanted to show commercials. We’d go down and throw chicken bones at the poor guy (alcohol was involved).
“. . . international fans were outraged that Dazn wasn’t showing the network commercials because the fans considered them an essential cultural component of the game.“
When FloRugby tried showing commercials during rugby matches, fans complained vociferously and often. They were removed. I honestly can’t imagine wanting</em commercials!
That timeout trick goes back to the 60’s . As a kid watching the Eagles then in Franklin Field, the University of Pennsylvania stadium, sitting on splintered benches, I would get cues from the old men sipping whiskey in front of me to watch for the guy on the sidelines. Whenever he’d put on a bigass cowboy hat, the refs would call a timeout. We were too eager then tossing snowballs at Santa Claus to worry about commercials then.
I have seen how this can play out. Years ago out of curiosity I watched part of an American gridiron football game and the ads were something else. At one point a guy kicked a ball between a goalpost and at that instant, an ad was inserted in the space between the goalposts. After that I turned it off. It was grotesque. I do not know how FIFA is going to come out of this. After the great successes of the FIFA World Cup in Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022, the present one is going to prove to be a shambles. Maybe the next one in 2030 hosted by Morocco, Portugal, and Spain will be able to get the game back to is roots but you cannot have a game meant for the common people having only wealthy people being able to attend. FIFA got way too greedy and are deliberately cheating even those going to the present games so hopefully there will be a reckoning.
Start a movement to only listen to the broadcasts with a blanket over the screen.
I listen to the Seattle football team on radio and it is great, Raible and Wyman are ex player commentators, and a lot of times they’re shooting the breeze waiting for the tv time outs to “play out” (/s)
“you cannot have a game meant for the common people having only wealthy people being able to attend.”
In the article, there are repeated references to ticket prices becoming outrageously expensive.
If the same kind of gouging usual in the USA (where everything — transport, parking places, tickets — is a rip-off) infects the rest of the world, I suspect that football fans, to a substantial proportion lower-class people, will have increasing difficulties to afford that kind of sports event.
Given that European countries have put in place extensive police measures to filter out hooligans (incl. identification, surveillance, and geographical exclusion zones for individuals), one can foresee those large, expensive stadiums becoming very sparsely occupied in the future. FIFA world cups will be even more of a money pit for organizing countries than they already are.
free market private sector innovation, I hope I don’t need to display the snark tag again…
This already happened in the UK years ago sadly. I suspect the same person is responsible (Rupert Murdoch).
Disc golf is where it’s at… ;)
It’s hyperbolic…even tom brady can’t put hyzer on a football
Ayn Rand holds no candle to An Hyzer!
Hydration break in 2nd half killed USMNT’s momentum last night.
[US-]Americans hating soccer is a trope, apparently, so I’m not surprised with this.
Even before the World Cup I was appalled enough to see a number of so-called “conservatives” in the USA denounce soccer as socialist – something to the effect of “the metric system in short pants”, who else remembers Ann Coulter’s 2014 screed?
Of course, as I got older and became aware of US malfeasance worldwide, I learned to ignore such US-exceptionalist punditry. This article makes me look back at all those publications I stumbled across back in 2017 (e.g. soccersuckssite.wordpress.com) and how far I had to go to reach the train of thought I have today.
One criticism I haven’t objected too much to back in ’17 was the low scoring making the sport “boring”. Seeing how others shared the glut of ads in a US football match on TV, I can’t help but wonder if cultural differences between the US/Canada and the rest of the world have to do with anything…
American football is as socialist as it gets with its rules designed intentionally for parity, from tight salary cap to scheduling to 8 divisions of 4 teams, ensuring at least one mediocre division winner and allowing Green Bay and Buffalo to compete with LA and NY.
I don’t watch as much football or sport in general as I used to, but I’ll still tune in to EPL when I have the chance on match days without other obligations – and of course I had to turn on the world cup in my homeland (if nothing else to see what all the commotion/catastrophic traffic is giving us…)
The euphemistically named hydration break in the first match I watched hit like a punch in the jaw. I think I texted at least 3 friends in incandescent rage about it. Unfortunately, I kept watching because the football was excellent and compelling and by yesterday, having lunch with a football-loving relative I’d not seen in some time, I didn’t even think to mention it in our conversations around the actual matches. Maybe I’ve been inured to it through the long and gaudy tradition of American omnimonetization, but my handful of international friends, fans of European leagues all, don’t seem to have suffered diminished enthusiasm.
It’s a tiresome real time reminder of just how well enshittification works. We’ve reached this point at which the overwhelming tendency of power is to exploit the underlying good will and faith of its constituent public, no matter what that public is, for little more than margin above and beyond already-guaranteed profits. It is impossible that a cup largely played in the USA could’ve done anything but print money absent this absurd rule change, but here we are and so begins the slow destruction of perhaps the most important, binding piece of shared culture the world has.
I really want to stress that too, near as I can see football is the only thing virtually every nation in the world can agree on. I suppose we’ve more-or-less agreed that diplomats and businessmen and other important personages should dress in western suits, and for awhile there we were mostly on the same page that nuclear proliferation unto annihilation might be unwise – but that’s been set aside out of obligate Russia-panic (by the way, Russia set to return to international competition in football soon! Yay?)
So I really do consider it terribly significant, this silly ball sport played sans hands except for Argentina that one time, having its triumphant, flagship event visibly corroded by the great American sickness.
Just once in my life I would like to see something get better.
The United States is set to gain permanent possession of the World Cup for Low, Mean, and Petty Behavior. The Trump administration and its minions are an example to any person or nation that wishes to sink to the depths of baseness and cruelty. It is akin to pulling the wings off flies.
Funnily enough, the NFL’s streaming service – now called NFL+ – shows the replays of all the games commercial-free. Which actually means they physically cut all the commercial breaks from the replay file, so that the average game stream is only 2 hours 5 minutes long, not the full 3 hour television slot. It’s almost shocking how different the whole thing feels without any ads, though, of course, who knows how many would be willing to wait 1-2 hours after any given game has ended to actually watch it commercial-free…
…speaking of streaming, the previous World Cup, in Qatar, was available to stream on Tubi – one of Fox’s streaming platforms – for free. Which is where I’d watched it. Now, apparently, one has to sign up with Fox’s paid streaming platform, whatever it’s called. Who’d have thought it.
Finally, I wish the OP had touched on the fact that a big chunk of commercials being shown during just about any sporting event in the US these days are for sports betting outfits. It’s another way to both commercialize and ruin a sporting event, turning it into a pure gambling experience, including with bets placed during the action itself. Not to mention the social impact, what with gambling addiction and all that. There is still a log less of it during World Cup matches than, say, NBA games, simply by the expedient of there not being anywhere near as many commercial breaks. Nevertheless.
Finally, part two. I can’t believe the OP hasn’t mentioned the expansion of the tournament itself, from 32 teams to 48, and from the Round of 16 to the Round of 32, which means 8 of the 12 3rd place teams are making it out of the group stage, which almost begs the question of why have the group stage to begin with.
Obviously, more games – more money, and it’s the fans’ fault for not necessarily caring all too much about the epic contests between, let me see now, Algeria and Austria? Or wonder whether Scotland will upset Brazil this year (it won’t). I mean, it’s the same 5-6 favorites that are making it to the quarter finals because they ALWAYS make it to the quarter finals, but now there is a lot more chaff along the way, with all due respect to the powerhouse soccer nations of Uzbekistan and Jordan…
When Germany had to meet Curacao I felt only humiliation. For all involved. Why does Germany have to stea candy from kids in a championship? Why does Curacao need to be beat into a pulp for all to see. Or Portugal – Usbekistan. Keep that kind of games on the friendship game-level not in the world championship.
The expansion to 32 teams just allows for teams that have no business in wasting championship-time prolonging the process by the end your are already fed up.
With the entshittificatkon of football I see longer championships and more violence played in 4-8 halves.
I know I will send an email here gianni.infantino@fifa.org
When I started to learn more about Gianni Infantino, I could only think, “He seems so American,” which obviously wasn’t a compliment.
The 45 minutes of uninterrupted soccer was a wonderful break from the commercialization of the world despite the sideboard and scoreboard advertising. For some reason, it reminded me of the drive from Kansas City to Denver which many people call the world’s most boring drive but for me is a wonderful break from the blunt force hammering of late-stage capitalism that accompanies most interstate drives with their loops of Walmart, Target, Home Depot, etc. Soccer and open air drives were an escape from all that.
Now we have a ref at 22:30 and 67:30 minutes in the game signal with outstretched and uplifted arms, “STOP THE GAME!”. He’s pointing to the benches, but he might as well be pointing to the sky and our financial overlords, “Now is your time gods of finance. We break for you.”
[In a perfect world, hydration breaks are only needed in games where the temp is above 90 or the heat index is above 95.]
No one else think premier league football is an infantile and frivolous pursuit, a surrogate for all male tribal, political energy that renders followers impotent? Anyone else think its an insane pathology and shameful for these people to be crying their hearts out at absolutely meaningless games played by pituitary retards while real tragedy plays out with zero engagement? Anyone feel that sport in general infantilises men who should be spending that time, money, emotion and energy on something real, anything that actually impacts anything outside of the circle jerk of organised sport? The whole thing is the most orwellian application of the feelies and you’re complaining about the ads? Its all fluff. Im working class and my bretheren watch this shit cos theyre severely indoctrinated from day 1. Their fathers live for this crap. It means more to them than anything. Its sad. Middle class people used to know better. At this point, same as those who prefer porn to real sex, or microdosers, the real thing is far too scary. The weak substitute for brotherhood (and mob mentality, othering the enemy etc) is about all they can handle. They certainly ain’t going to Spain to oust Franco.
Playing sport is great, especially for kids and especially football (soccer). US is killing millions. FIFA is evil. Being a middle class sports fan is as cool as being a middle class kid into NWA for the swears. You dont get it and its divisive poison. Any truth and beauty that does exist within its brutally tiny sandbox is Beastie Boyed until it dies a withering death.
in support of “it will change the game” and a view from a different game.
I used to play hockey (field hockey for the Americans).
local/club games are 35 minutes a half.
but the international games are 60 minutes – split into quarters. 2 minutes break between 1/2, 3/4 and then 5 minutes at half time between 2nd and 3rd quarters. This change is fairly new – 2014 at international level, and spread to the elite games over time. not at my level, that was still 35 minute halves
and yes it does make a difference . you can sustain a higher intensity play with 2 mins cool down between quarters (not that i played international! club only).
both formats have rolling subs (11 on field, squad of 16) and no offside… and its a super intense game.
so if we are to have ad breaks and change the game , then be honest about it. and acknowledge that it will change the game entirely. and it will be a different game, potentially better in some ways, worse in others.
just dont lie and call them hydration breaks.
As long as adults ‘in the stands cry with joy’ over a children’s game there will be no meaningful societal change.
Corruption and greed (i.e., commercialisation) — in sport, in everything else — are far from an American monopoly. Political pettiness in red, white and blue (e.g., player visas) is appalling but it doesn’t really have anything to do with the game. My interest in association football is little-to-none but when I saw the headline of this post I was minded of real examples of Americanisation in sports that I do follow.
The International Ice Hockey Federation pretends that it is an independent regulatory / coordinating body but everyone knows that they dance to the tune of North America’s National Hockey League. In recent years, the playing space has been altered to make it conform more to the NHL format; I mean the alteration of the shape of the goal crease and the introduction of the trapezoid. And mark my words, it won’t be long until the significantly larger ice surface of the international rink, allowing more free-flowing and faster skating, will be shrunk to the standard NHL size, which enforces a more elbow-to-elbow style of play. Even more blatant, however, was the wholly capricious change a few years ago to the game clock, which now counts down in the American style instead of up as in other world sports (including, e.g., the World Cup). They also now have enforced breaks in play to accommodate commercials; this was obvious in the recent World Championship played in Switzerland.
Another sport I watch is rugby union. I have never investigated the numbers but my hunch is that in terms of general popularity / awareness / knowledge rugby is even more of a niche sport in America than soccer is. Nevertheless, there is an Americanisation that is currently in the process of creeping in, in the world game. I refer to the name of the player on the back of his or her shirt. This was unknown only five years ago. In rugby, only 23 players dress for the match; there are 15 on the pitch at any given time, with strict substitution rules. Moreover, the number a player wears corresponds to the position he or she plays. (This is exactly true for the starting 15 and there are well-established patterns for the eight substitutes.) Thus, anyone who watches a team or a league regularly quickly learns who is who. The name on the jersey seems to be more of an ego thing, which I can’t believe the players themselves were / are clamouring for. I have heard of examples in America where young teenagers playing sports in school (‘junior high school’?) have their names on their shirts. Why?
Finally, in regard to the multiplicity of commercial interruptions in American football games and when they come (viz. Bugs, above). The game is nominally 60 minutes but it takes three hours or more to watch on television. That is bad enough. Bugs notes that
> … there are no pauses in the middle of plays in the NFL. … A play from the line of scrimmage
> doesn’t end until the ball is dead or the player holding the ball is down.
There was a delicious story on the interweb which lifts the veil on this.
https://qz.com/150577/an-average-nfl-game-more-than-100-commercials-and-just-11-minutes-of-play
An average NFL game: more than 100 commercials and just 11 minutes of play
That’s right: of the 60 minutes of the ‘game’; of the three-hours-plus spent watching, adding up the time from the line of scrimmage ‘until the ball is dead or the player holding the ball is down’, the ball is typically in play for all of 11 minutes. I for one say ‘no, thank you’.
That timeout trick goes back to the 60’s . As a kid watching the Eagles then in Franklin Field, the University of Pennsylvania stadium, sitting on splintered benches, I would get cues from the old men sipping whiskey in front of me to watch for the guy on the sidelines. Whenever he’d put on a bigass cowboy hat, the refs would call a timeout. We were too eager then tossing snowballs at Santa Claus to worry about commercials then.
Any similarity with ice hockey Power Breaks is purely coincidential.
this is the first world cup in my lifetime I am fully ignoring. That the US can participate in it, much less host it and behave as they do while Russia continues to be banned is a disgrace.