Los Angeles Times: Fans Slam FIFA’s Cooling Breaks—Why the US World Cup Team Doctor Disagrees

Cedars-Sinai sports medicine experts Bert Mandelbaum, MD, and Joshua Scott, MD, were recently interviewed by the Los Angeles Times and the AuntMinnie podcast about the 2026 FIFA World Cup, for which Los Angeles served as a host city.

Mandelbaum, medical director of the Cedars-Sinai FIFA Medical Centre of Excellence and interim chief medical officer of U.S. Soccer, told the Los Angeles Times he supports newly introduced mandatory cooling breaks for athletes, despite pushback from some fans.

“Difficult weather environments bring on dehydration and can create severe exhaustion, heat exhaustion, and those [conditions] have tremendous and dire consequences,” he said. “Not only is [the hydration break] a good thing, it’s a necessary thing.”

Mandelbaum, vice chair of Network Development at Cedars-Sinai Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine, told the Los Angeles Times that while cooling breaks may not be medically necessary for World Cup athletes playing in a climate-controlled indoor stadium like SoFi in Los Angeles, they set an important precedent for athlete safety in extreme heat.

“This is the world’s game … we have to figure out how to help players at all levels and ages to have the ability to thermoregulate, hydrate, how to do it well,” he said.

Scott, an orthopedic specialist and venue medical officer for World Cup 2026 in Los Angeles, told AuntMinnie podcast host Will Morton that delivering imaging services for international soccer teams at a major global tournament means being prepared for nearly any request, from MRIs and ultrasounds to X-rays.

“We offer a full service of everything while they’re here in town,” Scott said. “And then obviously there is a huge need to get that done as quickly as possible and to provide the team doctors not only with a report, but for them to be able to see the images in a very timely manner.”

He told Morton that while the scale of the World Cup is daunting, with multiple teams traveling across many locations and operating under different protocols, his work has “been a very positive experience so far. 

Read the complete article from the Los Angeles Times. Listen to the complete episode from AuntMinnie.