Boiling Point
Fifty-two years ago, Watergate brought down a President. In 2026, water won’t do that – no such luck – but it might end up being remembered with a similar level of notoriety.
Last week, FIFA – who seemed to have moved from going out of their way to upset fans to now deliberately trolling them – did an about-turn that UK politicians would have been proud of by announcing that fans could no longer bring water into the stadiums.
They’d originally said “For the avoidance of doubt, empty, transparent , reusable plastic bottles, up to 1 litre in capacity, may be brought into the stadium.” so the sudden reversal did not go down well.
They then did another spectacular flip-flop by reversing that decision; seemingly after the backlash from supporters groups. So FIFA’s latest guidance (as at 9 June - it may change) reveals that “fans would, in fact, now be allowed to bring in one, soft, plastic 20oz (590ml), factory sealed disposable water bottle” to matches in the United States and Canada. Note that Mexico wasn’t mentioned.
At least they swerved creating any doubt. So it seems that fans can bring their own, rather than having to buy water inside the stadium (to be fair, this was the policy in Qatar) although FIFA had promised that the prices of bottled water from refreshments kiosks inside the stadiums would be in a typical range, and not heavily inflated. But then someone also once said that public transport to the games would be free.
But this misses the point entirely. Whether it was what they’ve always done, whether it was in the bid or whether fans should pay for water or not; none of that really matters. What is pertinent here is the risk to health.
Only last month, scientists warned that FIFA’s heat safety measures were ‘inadequate.’ The heat levels in all but two of the sixteen stadiums are set to exceed dangerous levels. There are heat breaks planned for the players.
FIFA or the organisers (I can no longer tell them apart) had even said at one stage during the bid process that water would be freely available at stadiums, not just that fans would be able to fill their own bottles with it.
I have written in previous articles about Qatar, where I worked with two colleagues and three FIFA employees at ten games. We assessed the fan experience – it’s what we do – and water played a significant part in the final analysis. You see, one thing that stood out in the Middle East was the lack of provisions for fans to escape the heat.
As soon as you walked out of the underground Metro and it’s lovely, air-conditioned carriages and stations, it hit you. For the early games, the whole of the pre-match was spent in searing temperatures but there was barely any shade. Fan zones and villages sat in the middle of boiling patches of concrete. Other than a few indoor activations, mainly in the central fan park, there was scant cover from the sun. It was relentless. At the first game we assessed – England versus Iran – there were long queues as the ticket checking process had problems leaving thousands standing in the sun for well over one hour.
Water Shortages
And very little water was on offer. It could be purchased from the refreshment kiosks in the fan zones but even some of them ran out of the stuff quite early. If you needed to hydrate, then water wasn’t on tap. We fed these concerns back. Nothing really happened before we left near the end of the group phase, but we hoped that the final report would at least ensure that it didn’t happen again.
FIFA wanted – nay, encouraged – fans to arrive early and spend lots more time (and money) outside the stadiums but they did so at quite a risk of their health.
It wasn’t a new problem either. At the Women’s World Cup in 2019, in France, the semi-finals had taken place in a scorching Lyon stadium where fans had to walk a not-insignificant distance from the train station to the stadium. Temperatures were close to 100 degrees. There was no water available, and some fans struggled. But as is often the case, no one died, and everyone moved on and soon forgot all about it.
World Cups can be like this. There are ‘but for the grace of God moments’ that act as warnings that people either don’t see, or do but refuse to act. I’d been involved personally in a different kind of incident very early on in Qatar.
As an additional bit of assessing, outside of the scope of the initial project, we agreed to go to the fan park on the opening night as the hosts met Ecuador in the first game. It was carnage, and but for the timely intervention of police on horseback, could have been much, much worse. The organisers – opening the 80,000 capacity park for the first time – had cut about a third of it off to erect a stage and host an opening night concert. They’d also shut off a third of the gates to keep the area clear.
But all this did was to push tens of thousands of people to another entrance where queues initially built up and then grew and grew. We arrived about eighty minutes before the game – being shown on giant screens – kicked off. At first it was just busy. And dark. The lighting in that area was incredibly sparse making it difficult to see properly. After thirty minutes it had gone from busy to incredibly compact. Everyone was being squashed into the people around them and although it was dark and slightly cooler, it was getting uncomfortable.
Half an hour later, things started to go downhill. Fast. We were now pressed together like sardines in a can. The FIFA delegate who’d accompanied us began to panic. I hadn’t at this stage, but could see that it was starting to get bad. I’d felt something brush past my legs on several occasions and finally managed to look down and see people crawling between our legs to try to reach the front. By now, I’d long abandoned any notion of getting inside the park at all. It would be hard enough to get away from it the way the crowds behind and to the side of us had now grown.
My colleague and the FIFA delegate made their escape attempt. It was almost impossible, and I watched them trying to wade through the tightly-packed throngs I wasn’t confident they’d get anywhere but slowly they did, often just using good old-fashioned stubbornness mixed with a bit of elbow-power. My other colleague and me stayed, at first thinking that we’d be able to give a first-hand account of what it was like the next day.
Putting On The Squeeze
But by kick-off at the stadium, the park and its surrounding area was now seriously over-subscribed. I began to struggle to breath properly. People around us were gasping and some were crying. There were some kids amongst us. I remember thinking that if you lost your footing, you’d never regain it. I said to my colleague – for the first time, I was genuinely fearful – that I wasn’t sure this unsanctioned assessment was worth dying for. He agreed and we tried to leave but by now, no-one was going anywhere. But before we had time to go into full-on panic, the police suddenly arrived and parted the crowds like the White Horse Final.
In moments, the crush was dispersed, and we were able to move more freely. The next day, there were countless social media posts from people who’d felt – as I did – that we had been minutes from a major incident. The police – and soldiers – had arrived just in time and averted a disaster. Only in the cold (yeah right) light of the next morning did it occur to me how badly things might have gone had they not shown when they did.
Of course, as things didn’t go badly, everyone moved on and forgot all about it. There was a World Cup to be had and the action on the pitch soon turned everyone’s attention away from the potential crisis that they’d narrowly avoided.
I bring this up only because I was sharply reminded of the incident when I read the article about the water situation.
One of these days, something is going to happen and they won’t be as lucky. The 2026 World Cup already has a sense of foreboding; so many things seem to be building up on all kinds of levels – from dehydration fears to all-out-war. To quote Han Solo ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’ I really hope I’m wrong.
And probably they’ll get away with it. Again. And we will all forget and move on to Saudi Arabia in 2034. At least it’s not hot there.
In 2022, the eleventh-hour change was the sale of alcohol. The Qataris put a stop to it almost as the tournament was about to start, fearing it might create fan misbehaviour – and with hindsight, they were probably right.
Four years later, it’s hard to believe that - this time - we’re talking about water. Unlike alcohol, it will still be available to fans and - at the time of writing - maybe even in the fan's own bottles. Who knows if that will be the case come Thursday's opening ceremony?
Let’s just hope the price fans pay for all this nonsense isn't a high one.
