Science Weekly: heat stroke, sports washing, and the psychology of VAR: the science of the World Cup – podcast
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This is The Guardian.
Hi, Podfans. Max here. You're just about to hear an episode of Science Weekly recorded especially for us by their team. They are answering questions on how the extreme heat will affect players, the climate impact of the World Cup, and even the psychology of VAR. If you enjoy it, you should definitely go and subscribe to the excellent Science Weekly podcast available wherever you listen to this.
It's just a week until the first whistle blows at the 2026 World Cup in North America and Mexico. Temperatures are set to be sweltering and a group of scientists is raising the alarm about the impact on players and the quality of the game. Heat is also on FIFA as campaigners call out their fossil fuel sponsorship. Is it another own goal for their climate strategy? And spare a thought for the refs. On top of the climate, they're having to deal with a stepped-up VAR system this year. How will it impact their decisions?
Our Football Weekly colleagues asked us to look into the science of the World Cup. And, well, how could we refuse? From The Guardian, I'm Madeleine Finlay, and this is Science Weekly. Ian, thank you for joining me at this very special Football Weekly, Science Weekly collab. Now, we're starting with something that might not be too familiar to the English and Scottish teams, at least, playing in the heat. And this is actually something that's also got scientists worried. What are their concerns?
Well, the predictions are that this could be the hottest World Cup ever, or if not one of the hottest World Cups ever. And that has prompted a group of doctors and scientists to write an open letter to FIFA because they're really concerned about the potential for harm to players and even match officials, the referees. I spoke to Dr. Oliver Gibson. He's one of the signatories of this letter, and he's a member of academic staff at Brunel University of London. He studies the impact of heat stress on human performance. And I said to him, you know, what is in this letter?
focused our letter and the research on a metric called wet bulb globe temperature, which encapsulates all of the environmental conditions that the players will experience. So it takes into account the air temperature of the environment that the players are playing in. But it also acknowledges that heat stress goes beyond just temperature. So there's a need to acknowledge the impact of humidity on the players, the impact of solar radiation.
How will extreme heat affect players in the 2026 World Cup?
So effectively feeling the sun on your skin and the heat stress that that imparts. as well as the potentially helpful cooling effect that comes from airflow and the wind speed that affects players.
They've worked out in about half a dozen of the cities where these matches are going to be played. And we're talking about places like Dallas, Houston, Miami. This wet bulb globe temperature could hit 30 Celsius. And that is brutal if you're playing football at the intensity that these elites are going to be playing at. But there's also a concern about what this might mean for the spectacle of the World Cup, for the performance of the players.
Right. So what exactly will these temperatures be doing to the players physically?
Well, if you think about how the body cools down, obviously it cools down in a bunch of ways, but the main way is through sweating. The body has to sort of dilate all the blood vessels near your skin and it pumps more blood through those areas. So you have the blood near the skin and sweat on your skin. As that evaporates, it takes heat away from the blood, okay? So that cooler blood then gets pumped back to the heart and circulates around the body. But If you think about it at the same time, for these footballers, their muscles will be demanding an awful lot of blood as well. So those are in competition. And you can get to the point where this cooling just stops working. It doesn't do enough. And that is when it hits performance and obviously carries these health risks as well.
And the worst case scenario is that you get heat stroke, and that can be fatal.
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