BERN, Switzerland (AP) \u2014 The soccer league in FIFA\u2019s home country Switzerland is not interested in World Cup -style mandatory drinks breaks splitting games into four quarters.<\/p>\n
The Swiss Football League said Wednesday \u201chydration breaks\u201d are not planned in its games next season. It starts July 25 with two 6 p.m. kickoffs, then games at 2 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. the next day.<\/p>\n
Switzerland has sweltered in the European heat wave during the World Cup with some evening temperatures around 35 Celsius (95 Fahrenheit).<\/p>\n
FIFA ordered three-minute breaks midway through each half of all 104 World Cup games to let players hydrate, regardless of the temperature or if the stadium is cooled under a roof.<\/p>\n
Critics of \u201chydration breaks\u201d say the stoppages disrupt the natural flow of games and are designed, as well as to protect players\u2019 health, to give broadcasters who paid FIFA a collective billions of dollars for World Cup rights time to sell more advertising.<\/p>\n
The Swiss league joins European soccer body UEFA in stating they will continue to apply drinks breaks only \u201cwhen temperatures justify it\u201d after a pre-game agreement with teams.<\/p>\n
The first high-profile drinks breaks in soccer involved Lionel Messi at the 2008 Olympics. The men\u2019s final kicked off at midday in Beijing and play stopped for less than two minutes in each half during Argentina\u2019s 1-0 win over Nigeria.<\/p>\n
FIFA enforced cooling breaks also required by a Brazilian labor court at some games during the 2014 World Cup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BERN, Switzerland (AP) \u2014 The soccer league in FIFA\u2019s home country Switzerland is not interested in World Cup -style mandatory drinks breaks splitting games into four quarters. The Swiss Football League said Wednesday \u201chydration breaks\u201d are not planned in its games next season. It starts July 25 with two 6 p.m. kickoffs, then games at … Continue reading League in FIFA\u2019s home nation Switzerland rejects World Cup-style mandatory drinks breaks<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1452],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1519648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-03 14:53:47","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1519648"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1519649,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519648\/revisions\/1519649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1519648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1519648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1519648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}