How the World Cup final is starting to look a lot like the Super Bowl

World CupHow the World Cup final is starting to look a lot like the Super BowlWith hydration breaks, a halftime show and championship rings, this Sunday’s final will look very familiar to American viewers but different to the rest of the world. Listen to this article with a free profile00:0000:00Workers placing a FIFA logo on the pitch ahead of a match between France and Senegal in East Rutherford, N.J. last month.Mauro Pimentel / AFP via Getty Images fileShareAdd NBC News to GoogleJuly 18, 2026, 7:17 AM EDTBy Rohan NadkarniFor American viewers of the World Cup final on Sunday, the sport the rest of the world knows as football will closely resemble the one Americans call the same name.Subscribe to read this story ad-freeGet unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.That’s because, perhaps taking a cue from the Super Bowl, the FIFA World Cup final will feature its very own halftime show.Unlike the Super Bowl, however, the World Cup’s halftime show is not being met with quite the same anticipation as say, a performance by Bad Bunny. That’s because the halftime show is the latest maneuver by FIFA that arguably changes the spirit of the sport, which started with this tournament’s hydration breaks.Although FIFA had implemented “cooling breaks” before to address such sweltering conditions as the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, this year was the first time that hydration breaks were mandated to take place in the middle of each half of every game. Lasting three minutes each, the breaks effectively broke matches into quarters, which critics, such as England coach Thomas Tuchel, said “interrupts and changes the identity of a football match much more than I thought.”Said Uruguay coach Marcelo Bielsa: “Playing four periods instead of two alters the culturally constructed conception of how to interpret football. In my view, it adds nothing and takes away a lot. When [the match] was divided into four periods, no thought was given to the effect it might have on what mak...