Football: Players' body wants half-time breaks to be 20 minutes

Manchester City's Erling Haaland sprays water onto his face during the Club World Cup round of 16 football match between Manchester City and Al Hilal. (AP Photo)Manchester City's Erling Haaland sprays water onto his face during the Club World Cup round of 16 soccer match between Manchester City and Al Hilal. With the ongoing Fifa Club World Cup witnessing extreme heat conditions, the global players’ union has called for the need to extend the halftime breaks to 20 minutes. The Fifpro says the time has come for additional measures to be put in place to protect the players from the exhaustive conditions.

- GNS News Agency, July 9

As of now, in tournaments held during the summer, Fifa protocols are in place to have a three-minute cooling break in each half to protect players from hot conditions. And Fifpro’s medical director, Dr Vincent Gouttebarge, has said an extended halftime break would provide a necessary additional tool in helping to keep players’ core temperatures within their normal range.“A cooling break generally lasts three minutes and they are designed to decrease the [player's] temperature through the use of ice,” he said. “But we are lacking the evidence in terms of what is the optimal duration for a cooling break. A halftime of 15 minutes might not be enough to decrease the core temperature. So a lot of research is being done into alternative mitigation strategies and it could be that a halftime of 20 minutes is significant. It has been shown [to work] in the laboratory. Together with the national [players