Midway through the first half against Senegal on Sunday, Mauricio Pochettino waved every U.S. player off the field, gathered them around a MacBook laptop on the bench, and started running clips. Not a whiteboard. Not a shouted instruction over gatorade. A laptop, held in one hand by an analyst, with Pochettino pointing at the screen and calling out specific plays in real time.
The U.S. won 3-2. And now they're waiting to find out if any of it was actually allowed.
FIFA hasn't given a clear answer
Here's the problem: nobody seems to know whether players can leave the field during hydration breaks, or whether laptops can be used to show tactical clips during those stoppages. FIFA's published rules permit laptops and tablets on the sideline in general, but the specific rules around the mandatory three-minute breaks — which will apply to every half of every World Cup match starting June 12 — haven't been fully defined. FIFA did not respond to requests for clarification.
Pochettino acknowledged the grey area directly. "We'll see now in the World Cup if they can allow that, and how we are going to do that," he said after the match. The U.S. had a pre-tournament meeting with FIFA on Friday, but as Pochettino put it, there were "still a few things that they didn't decide how they are going to act in different situations."
Defender Mark McKenzie put it plainly: "I was definitely surprised, because normally you're not allowed off the field. It was a new one, for sure."
A tactical stop in disguise
FIFA is selling these breaks as a player welfare measure, but every coach in the tournament knows what they really are. Portugal's Roberto Martinez said it outright: "This is a tactical stop. Of course it is a hydration stop, but during three minutes — we've seen many examples in other sports, basketball, futsal — the game can really change." France coach Didier Deschamps was equally blunt after a March friendly: "This changes football."
Pochettino doesn't like the breaks — he said so — but he's clearly not wasting them. The video caught him mid-session, instructing analyst Alec Scott to play and pause clips: "OK, keep going, play... And now, and now — stop. And now, listen! Tim, now you see that it's impossible to play [a pass]. Play here."
It's the kind of real-time tactical correction that coaches in other sports take for granted. In football, it's genuinely new territory.
The U.S. has one more pre-tournament friendly — against Germany on Saturday at Soldier Field in Chicago — before opening the World Cup against Paraguay on June 12 at SoFi Stadium. Whether Pochettino gets to keep his MacBook in the mix during those breaks may depend entirely on whether FIFA can answer a question they apparently haven't fully thought through yet.
