Monday morning halfback: Hydration breaks, watered-down competition highlight World Cup kickoff

Jamie Ross is The Globe’s sports editor; Cathal Kelly is The Globe’s national sports columnist.

Jamie Ross: Hey Cathal. One World Cup weekend down. Jesse Marsch made some news, so let’s start there. He’s not Canadian, but he’s coaching the national team here. The United States has an Argentine leading their squad. Brazil has its first-ever foreign head coach, an Italian.

This is the case in other sports as well, but you’d never imagine seeing it in hockey, in this country anyway. What gives? Are there no great Canadian soccer coaches?

Cathal Kelly: Jamie, to be fair, Canada has tried with homegrown coaches. They all flamed out – though so have most of the foreigners. It’s a tough gig. Or, at least, was.

I think the tendency to look outside is down to the worldliness of your sport. None is more cosmopolitan than soccer, and therefore none is more open to new ideas from new people from elsewhere. The more parochial a sport, the more likely it is to be closed shop. Hence, all the big North American sports, save basketball. Basketball is a world game.

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An NHL team would be more likely to put a chimp in charge than someone who’d spent their whole career in Europe. I’d be okay with a chimp. Might improve the entertainment value of press conferences.

Sticking with Marsch, what did you make of his shot at the U.S. national team and how “we had to beg players to sing the national anthem”?

JR: Probably an unnecessary drive-by on his old teammates, but it shows where his loyalties lie. He was on the jumbotron Friday in Toronto singing O Canada. And he’s already gone up against Donald Trump when Trump went after Canada with his 51st state rhetoric last year. A fight with Clint Dempsey should be a cinch.

More concerning, however, and the real reason I opened this up with the Marsch prompt, was his decision to wear dress sneakers, those shoes with the leather uppers and white soles. I’ve come to expect this sort of behaviour of Sidney Crosby, but not from the head coach of such a, as you put it, cosmopolitan sport. Talk to me about dress sneakers for a minute and why they should be banned by FIFA.

CK: FIFA? They should be banned by the United Nations. If you wear those things out of the house, a tomato-chucking mob should follow you wherever you’re going. If you show up for Thanksgiving dinner in them, you should be forced to eat in the driveway.

Somewhere along the line we got it mixed up. Sneakers are for running or jumping or, I suppose, sneaking. Dress shoes are for looking like an adult when you go to your job. The two things don’t belong together.

It’s not comfortable, people say. You know what, pal? Life isn’t meant to be comfortable. It’s meant to be hard. Wear hard shoes. And real pants, not stretchy ones. And don’t even get me started on shorts at the office.

JR: I’ve struck a nerve. I’ve walked whole cities with you going from one venue to another, and you’re always wearing what look to be stiff, expensive shoes. Do you think that because you choose to suffer, everyone else should?

CK: Well, they aren’t stiff. My approach to shoes is that you buy a couple of pairs of really good (and, sure, expensive) ones and they’ll last you forever. The ones I’m wearing today I’ve owned for 20 years. I’ve just had them resoled a bunch of times (shout out to Rob’s Best Foot Forward on Toronto Street).

A guy I knew who worked in men’s wear once told me that when you enter a shop, the first thing the salesperson looks at are your shoes. While I don’t really care what anyone thinks of me, this strikes me as worth bearing in mind. Back to your point – suffering’s just a pleasant side effect.

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This is turning into a fashion conversation, which I believe butts up against Globe union rules. No fraternizing amongst the sections.

Heat has become controversial at this World Cup, though not yet for the reason people assumed. The issue is the marriage of hydration breaks (which aren’t new) with ad breaks (which are).

Do you have a problem with FIFA, which does so much for so many for so little, making a few extra bucks?

JR: I’m not a football purist so it bothers me none insofar as it’s a break from convention. I do however have an issue with sports events running longer than they need to.

Some may be reading this online, but we are still a newspaper and those need to be printed and in a timely fashion. Some nights every minute counts.

I’m already down on basketball for its final two minutes of game clock every night taking what feels like 20 real life minutes, though it gets a pass for Saturday night’s Knicks win. That was worth the wait.

CK: I’ve never been a fan of the hydration break because it disadvantages the team that’s in better shape. I’m not against hydration. They can stack water bottles at the touch line. Anyone who wants one can come get a drink. I’m against the idea of a full breather for the team that’s losing. Maybe an exception could be made in exceptionally hot conditions. Some sort of wet bulb temperature threshold that’s universally applied. But not just because the sun’s out.

However, once the hydration break appeared, you knew in your bones that someone was going to use it as an excuse to put ads in the middle of soccer games. FIFA’s just done what everyone else was waiting for someone else to do first. I feel bad for Premier League marketers. Hard to claim the players need to be hydrated when it’s pelting down rain.

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As for the Knicks, I maintain my contention that the worst thing that can happen to an iconic franchise that hasn’t won in forever is winning. Look at what happened to the Cubs. What is the point of Knicks basketball now that they’re good? Beware Leafs shareholders.

What about the games themselves? Anything standing out to you so far about the level of competition? It’s not exactly classic yet, is it?

JR: Nothing too shiny from the games yet. That’s probably a product of the expanded 48-team field, which waters down the competition.

I thought the limits of our collective sports consumption would’ve maxed out long ago, but year after year I am proven wrong with the introduction of a new pro sports league here, an expansion franchise there. There is only so much money and attention span to go around. Which part of the equation am I missing?

CK: What’s missing there is our apparently inexhaustible appetite for prelims. There is a tight, exciting World Cup inside this bloated, meandering World Cup. We just won’t get to it until the beginning of July. Meanwhile, people seem happy to ride the wave of hype. I can’t blame anyone for wanting some circuses along with their $12 loaves of bread.

So far, it’s all a bit humdrum. That Switzerland-Qatar match was like watching the waves come in. Almost soothing in its blandness (until the very end). Even Brazil was crap.

But I trust there is more and better excitement to come. Our jobs depend on it.

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