Effective playing time

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Ever since I watched a CL qualifying game in the late 90s. involving a Portuguese team (can't remember whether it was Benfica or Sporting) I started to question "time measures" in football. The Portuguese team was leading on away goal coming into the game and started time-wasting from the kick-off, so I started a stopwatch to take the time the Portuguese were "time-wasting". Their goalie (no kidding) caused alone caused 12 minutes (!!!) of time-wasting by pretending to be injured every time he caught the ball from free-kicks, corners (which happened quite often as his team spend most of the time in defense), and crosses into the box, doing more rolling than Neymar. It's a minor "miracle" this goalie did not end up in hospital with all the "injuries" he apparently sustained. Around 20 minutes were "wasted" by his team while the ref just added 6 minutes. So they "bought"14 minutes o non-playing time.
I would like to see top leagues introduce effective playing time, with an official keep track of when the ball is out of play and then simply stop the watch.
Each game could be, say, 35 minutes.

"Fergie time" was a well-known banter during his time but it was also a fact...



FIFA President Gianni Infantino would like to introduce effective playing time in the 2022 World Cup, an issue Milan coach Stefano Pioli has been pushing, but the statistics show Serie A has the ball in play for longer than the Premier League.

The idea would be to keep track of how many minutes the ball is actually in play and set a specific limit to ensure that amount of football is played during a match.

That would mean games likely lasting a lot longer than 90 minutes to make up for all the stoppages.

It’s hardly a new debate, as Milan boss Pioli has been pushing for it over many months, maintaining that is the best way to ensure fairness in modern football.

“I would make three main modifications to the rules,” said Pioli back in September 2021.

“I’d work on effective playing time, add a time-out in the first half and, seeing as we like attacking football, ensure once a team has gone past the halfway line, it cannot pass the ball back over.”

Pioli has raised the subject of effective playing time on several occasions since last season, most recently following the draw with Udinese.

“It’s not possible that the effective playing time for that game was 45 minutes. It’s half a match, it’s not fair to play only 45 minutes out of 90.

“If the referees don’t whistle as much, the players will get straight back up and not lie there rolling around to waste time. That is the fault of the referees even more than the players.”

The Milan coach also said Italian teams would always struggle in Europe because they have less effective playing time than most other top leagues.

The CIES Football Observatory crunched the numbers and showed that was in fact not the case at all.

Since 2018-19, Serie A had an average effective playing time of 61.35 minutes per game, which is the highest of the European top five leagues.

The German Bundesliga averages 61.28 minutes, the English Premier League 60.59 minutes per game, Ligue 1 in France 60.32 minutes and LaLiga in Spain just 58.36 minutes.

The main European League with the worst effective time average was the Scottish Premiership on 55.38 minutes, despite their reputation for fast-moving and physical games.





 
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It's is getting to the stage where we will be like the NFL. We are getting lots of games with 8-10 minutes 'added time' in the second half alone. Absolute nonsense for night games when you are thinking about your last train etc.

Something needs to be done for sure.
 
Just make games 60 mins and stop the clock for throw ins, VAR, free kicks and penalties and teams like Burnley and Brighton where the fucking keepers are time wasting from kick off.
 
Effective Playing Time pops up again in this article I've just read:


What I find hilarious about the latest proposed changes is the reasoning of making football faster, sportier and fairer to keep the attention of the fan of the future, ie to maintain the gravy train for those at the top.

It's the fucking money at stake that makes many matches boring as fuck! So many attritional battles between two sides too afraid to lose a game to risk going for the win, due to the financial repercussions of failure. Now they are having to think of ways to artificially boost the entertainment value so that fans keep throwing said money at it.
 
Ever since I watched a CL qualifying game in the late 90s. involving a Portuguese team (can't remember whether it was Benfica or Sporting) I started to question "time measures" in football. The Portuguese team was leading on away goal coming into the game and started time-wasting from the kick-off, so I started a stopwatch to take the time the Portuguese were "time-wasting". Their goalie (no kidding) caused alone caused 12 minutes (!!!) of time-wasting by pretending to be injured every time he caught the ball from free-kicks, corners (which happened quite often as his team spend most of the time in defense), and crosses into the box, doing more rolling than Neymar. It's a minor "miracle" this goalie did not end up in hospital with all the "injuries" he apparently sustained. Around 20 minutes were "wasted" by his team while the ref just added 6 minutes. So they "bought"14 minutes o non-playing time.
I would like to see top leagues introduce effective playing time, with an official keep track of when the ball is out of play and then simply stop the watch.
Each game could be, say, 35 minutes.

"Fergie time" was a well-known banter during his time but it was also a fact...



FIFA President Gianni Infantino would like to introduce effective playing time in the 2022 World Cup, an issue Milan coach Stefano Pioli has been pushing, but the statistics show Serie A has the ball in play for longer than the Premier League.

The idea would be to keep track of how many minutes the ball is actually in play and set a specific limit to ensure that amount of football is played during a match.

That would mean games likely lasting a lot longer than 90 minutes to make up for all the stoppages.

It’s hardly a new debate, as Milan boss Pioli has been pushing for it over many months, maintaining that is the best way to ensure fairness in modern football.

“I would make three main modifications to the rules,” said Pioli back in September 2021.

“I’d work on effective playing time, add a time-out in the first half and, seeing as we like attacking football, ensure once a team has gone past the halfway line, it cannot pass the ball back over.”

Pioli has raised the subject of effective playing time on several occasions since last season, most recently following the draw with Udinese.

“It’s not possible that the effective playing time for that game was 45 minutes. It’s half a match, it’s not fair to play only 45 minutes out of 90.

“If the referees don’t whistle as much, the players will get straight back up and not lie there rolling around to waste time. That is the fault of the referees even more than the players.”

The Milan coach also said Italian teams would always struggle in Europe because they have less effective playing time than most other top leagues.

The CIES Football Observatory crunched the numbers and showed that was in fact not the case at all.

Since 2018-19, Serie A had an average effective playing time of 61.35 minutes per game, which is the highest of the European top five leagues.

The German Bundesliga averages 61.28 minutes, the English Premier League 60.59 minutes per game, Ligue 1 in France 60.32 minutes and LaLiga in Spain just 58.36 minutes.

The main European League with the worst effective time average was the Scottish Premiership on 55.38 minutes, despite their reputation for fast-moving and physical games.






“I’d work on effective playing time, add a time-out in the first half and, seeing as we like attacking football, ensure once a team has gone past the halfway line, it cannot pass the ball back over the line."
 
Unless it's a head injury or an obvious one like a broken leg, just play on, if the physio has to come on, stop the clock.

I want to see a ref actually send a keeper off with a second yellow for time wasting.... Trouble is. It would probably be lloris
 

Issue number 242 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post relies on InStat data to present the average effective time of games in 37 European competitions. The Swedish Allsvenskan is the league with the most fluid matches (60.4% of effective time), just ahead the UEFA Champions League (60.2%). The Portuguese Primeira Liga finds itself in the opposite position (50.9%).

The highest effective playing time among the five major European leagues was recorded for the German Bundesliga (58.5%), while the lowest was measured for the Spanish Liga (55.8%). As for the Champions League, Europa League games are more fluid than the average observed at the level of the 35 competitions surveyed: 57.1% of effective time compared to 55.3%.

The highest percentage of minutes in which the ball was in play for clubs in national competitions was recorded for matches of the Swedish side GIF Sundsvall (63.7%). This is 18% more than for games of the Portuguese team Feirense. Club Brugge tops the Champions League table (66.2%), while Borussia Mönchengladbach (62.5%), Liverpool (62.2%), Milan AC (61.2%), Barcelona (60.3%) and Paris St-Germain (60.1%) present the greatest figures for the big-5 leagues.

See also the exclusive CIES Football Observatory Performance Atlas
 
Ever since I watched a CL qualifying game in the late 90s. involving a Portuguese team (can't remember whether it was Benfica or Sporting) I started to question "time measures" in football. The Portuguese team was leading on away goal coming into the game and started time-wasting from the kick-off, so I started a stopwatch to take the time the Portuguese were "time-wasting". Their goalie (no kidding) caused alone caused 12 minutes (!!!) of time-wasting by pretending to be injured every time he caught the ball from free-kicks, corners (which happened quite often as his team spend most of the time in defense), and crosses into the box, doing more rolling than Neymar. It's a minor "miracle" this goalie did not end up in hospital with all the "injuries" he apparently sustained. Around 20 minutes were "wasted" by his team while the ref just added 6 minutes. So they "bought"14 minutes o non-playing time.
I would like to see top leagues introduce effective playing time, with an official keep track of when the ball is out of play and then simply stop the watch.
Each game could be, say, 35 minutes.

"Fergie time" was a well-known banter during his time but it was also a fact...



FIFA President Gianni Infantino would like to introduce effective playing time in the 2022 World Cup, an issue Milan coach Stefano Pioli has been pushing, but the statistics show Serie A has the ball in play for longer than the Premier League.

The idea would be to keep track of how many minutes the ball is actually in play and set a specific limit to ensure that amount of football is played during a match.

That would mean games likely lasting a lot longer than 90 minutes to make up for all the stoppages.

It’s hardly a new debate, as Milan boss Pioli has been pushing for it over many months, maintaining that is the best way to ensure fairness in modern football.

“I would make three main modifications to the rules,” said Pioli back in September 2021.

“I’d work on effective playing time, add a time-out in the first half and, seeing as we like attacking football, ensure once a team has gone past the halfway line, it cannot pass the ball back over.”

Pioli has raised the subject of effective playing time on several occasions since last season, most recently following the draw with Udinese.

“It’s not possible that the effective playing time for that game was 45 minutes. It’s half a match, it’s not fair to play only 45 minutes out of 90.

“If the referees don’t whistle as much, the players will get straight back up and not lie there rolling around to waste time. That is the fault of the referees even more than the players.”

The Milan coach also said Italian teams would always struggle in Europe because they have less effective playing time than most other top leagues.

The CIES Football Observatory crunched the numbers and showed that was in fact not the case at all.

Since 2018-19, Serie A had an average effective playing time of 61.35 minutes per game, which is the highest of the European top five leagues.

The German Bundesliga averages 61.28 minutes, the English Premier League 60.59 minutes per game, Ligue 1 in France 60.32 minutes and LaLiga in Spain just 58.36 minutes.

The main European League with the worst effective time average was the Scottish Premiership on 55.38 minutes, despite their reputation for fast-moving and physical games.






I spent six weeks in Lisbon in 1992 on a course and then hanging out. I made friends with a football obsessed Celtic fan and we went to every game we could, Benfica, Sporting and Belenenses.

Football was unfashionable and unpopular at that time, much more so than in Spain, which was also some way behind England in this regard.

The amount of time wasting was almost surreal, every slight push resulted in the victim going down and rolling around in agony. I remember a Sporting-Boavista game where at every juncture four men ran on the pitch to attend the player in agony, two of whom were wearing a suit. People around us seemed to think it was perfectly normal.
 
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