Yes much better that the ref can just make up added time based on whatever he feels like at the time. He'll miss half of it injured anyway.
Varane publicly challenges the FA over rule changes and number of games
- Thread starter UnitedSofa
- Start date
Yeah, but there was a sizeable stoppage in injury time. Simple solution to long matches is on the players. Don’t cheat.
FA just give referees more power to influence the game. Referees that have no accountability.
It's a funny one; a team time wastes throughout a game, ten minutes get added on, and they're the ones who go on to score a late winner as the oppo are fatigued.
I think the idea is correct, to stop nonsense teams like Newcastle taking the piss, but I personally think it's gonna be a mess.
I think the idea is correct, to stop nonsense teams like Newcastle taking the piss, but I personally think it's gonna be a mess.
do away with time limits altogether and the winner will be the one that wants it more.
Effective playing time. Thanks to mainly time wasting tactics, goal celebrations, to less extent injury most games were 15-30 mintues less than 90 minutes effective playing time according to their research.
This is really what needs to be resolved. Cut some games.
What time is the last bus home?
This one does my fecking head in. I could have sworn that a few years ago stopping a quick free kick was an automatic yellow, but now it seems to be a 50/50 whether the ref books them.
And when the opposition player picks up the ball and walks off with it before throwing it back
Rodri always pops into my head when I think of that.
Rugby has got substitions right too. If you're watching on TV, most of the time you don't even see them happen. They get the players off and onto the field quickly because play isn't held up for them to do so. Football should follow suit.
Games are what need to be cut, not the horrible time wasting by certain teams.
Internationals should be cut, teams should play more youth players in domestic cups in earlier rounds and competitions shouldn't be expanding constantly.
Internationals should be cut, teams should play more youth players in domestic cups in earlier rounds and competitions shouldn't be expanding constantly.
5-10 extra minutes isn't the problem. UEFA and FIFA constantly expanding competitions and adding new games to the calendar is.
I used 10 minutes as an example. The amount of minutes added is a complete lottery, when it should not be open to interpretation but factual.
Varane only ever plays about 30 games a season anyway.
I wanna hear from someone like Bruno on the number of games.
I wanna hear from someone like Bruno on the number of games.
Feel like you're slightly buying into the lie that the PL is competitive and anyone could win a trophy narrative, maybe 10+ years ago they could have done - it would have still been hard but the disproportionate money spread in the PL has killed that dream off.
Some of our ideas could be:
- first team to score 7 goals wins the game.
- a panel of judges on the side of the pitch who decide when the game should end and the winning team.
- the audience decides when to stop the game via an app. 99p to download the app and an additional 50p to use it, which goes towards our transfer targets next year. Wesley Sneijder, here we come!
- a randomly assigned member of the audience is the 'secret timekeeper'. This is an interesting new mechanic where you can enter a ballot to be the secret timekeeper. STK for short. When this member of the public is ready, they stand up and announce the game is finished and the result is defined.
- keep playing until it gets dark and nobody can see the ball any more.
- goals to be scrapped as the most valuable metric, with additional points given to damage, control, style, and aggression, like in Robot Wars.
We'll call this...Football 2.
Personally I think the "stopping the clock" approach is probably best, alongside allowing referees more scope to deal with persistent tactical low-level fouling.
The average game in play time is at its lowest level and is decreasing every year. Newcastle literally turned up to old Trafford last season and time wasted from their first goal kick. Something has to be done about time wasting - you either add it at the end or you stop the clock. Or we all just accept we’re perfectly happy with 50 minute games which is where it’ll be in a few years time.
I'm actually surprised we don't already stop the clock. Scrap added time entirely once the clock hits 45 and 90 mins. As soon as the ball goes dead, the game is over.
Yes, to stop time wasting by faking injury, how long does it take to take a throw in and a goal kick? On Talk Sport this morning they said the average time the ball was in play was around 55 minutes.
As punters we are getting short changed a game should be over 90 minutes, I’m all for proper extra time if it means watching close to the actual 90 minutes of play.
But that’s what I’m saying, top teams get 5/6 minutes added on regardless of wether the opposition were time wasting or not. There was originally 8 minutes added on yesterday which was mind boggling.
Look at Liverpool v Villa last season. Villa were, by far, the better team. Scored and ceded possession mid way through the second half to Liverpool after complete first half domination. There was no time wasting, just Villa cutting through them time and time again.
10 minutes added on out of the skies when Liverpool needed to score 2 (Liverpool scored just before the 90 mark when time was already decided)
We can all talk about time wasting and bookings but refs follow the narrative of games a lot more than people care to admit.
Liverpool needed to win the game to keep CL qualification alive and the ref played into it. It’ll simply get worse under this new rule. You can go slow without it being considered time wasting. There’s no law saying you have to sprint for throw ins or run to get subbed off etc
Thought this for years.
Then they’d lose out on a lot more games and seeing top players perform if games need to be 3 hours long to get 90 minutes in
The time keeping rule change is definitely a good thing - it's the constant widening of competitions to produce more games that is problematic.
I can't remember watching a game and thinking "what this needs is less emotion", though. Emotion is great. That's a weird one.
I can't remember watching a game and thinking "what this needs is less emotion", though. Emotion is great. That's a weird one.
This is the solution but theyre too blind to see it.
Change it to four 15 minute quarters with stopped clocks like American football. We can then introduce timeouts too. Should help increase broadcast revenue with all the breaks.
In all seriousness though, what annoys me more than this is all the extra games they keep adding. The nations league in the summer. The club world cup getting expanded. The extra CL games. It's crazy. You saw what happened in those 2 years where you had no summer break in 2020 due to Corona, then players played a full season and then had the Euros after. A one week break and back it, most of our England internationals were terrible after the Euros - thankfully Rashford and Shaw recovered but Maguire's legs went. A lot of other players like Mane were gone too.
Do players not have a union or something to strike through?
In all seriousness though, what annoys me more than this is all the extra games they keep adding. The nations league in the summer. The club world cup getting expanded. The extra CL games. It's crazy. You saw what happened in those 2 years where you had no summer break in 2020 due to Corona, then players played a full season and then had the Euros after. A one week break and back it, most of our England internationals were terrible after the Euros - thankfully Rashford and Shaw recovered but Maguire's legs went. A lot of other players like Mane were gone too.
Do players not have a union or something to strike through?
Forest and Southampton reached the semi finals last season. Southampton even beat City.
If they put it as a priority, Brentford and Villa could go beyond that. They could easily beat a slightly weakened United/ City/ Arsenal/ Liverpool etc side on their day.
You could even apply the wider logic to Arsenal. They have won only five major trophies (all FA Cups) in the last 20 seasons. Why on earth aren't they going for it? For the sake of a few extra games, it could give the club a huge lift. Quite interesting that before United's biggest spells of dominance, (93 - 2001) and (2006 - 2013) we won the League Cup in the season before.
And ultimately, this is the issue. An expanded Club World Cup isn't going to go down well once its started and gains a regular spot in the calendar.
The referee and assistants would still be policing the game to keep it going. We shouldn't need to sacrifice the game because players and coaches are taking the piss.
I think to an extent the moneymen running the game are to blame for this. The drama of an added time winner is part of "the product" for them. Obviously as a United fan I can appreciate how great that last gasp winner can feel, but there needs to be something in place to curtail the gamesmanship and timewasting which has become endemic in the game, and I think stopping the clock is preferable to having 15 mins of added time every game.
Bearing in mind that the topic of this thread is Varane saying players play too much, these proposed gametimes would make that problem worse as it would mean many more minutes again than they currently play.
So it would increase the pressure to cut games first.
I think you’re reading too much into time wasting. A lot more time is used up on lining up corners, free kicks, goal kicks etc. you’re policing a very small aspect of the allotted time.
It’s the falling down and breaking up the flow of the game that’s the biggest aspect of time wasting and there’s simply no way of fixing that if the ref blows and simply decides it’s a foul.
I’d love to see a game analysed where run of the mill time usage was timed against the 90 minutes. The entire ball in play fact that keeps getting posted ignored what actually has to happen on the pitch.
I saw on Reddit that Sunderland v Ipswich yesterday had 15 minutes added on to the game when both fanbases agreed there wasn’t any time wasting going on.
Are the top footballers really playing much more than in previous decades?
I do agree with Varane but you have to look at the clubs as well. We have just done the most ridiculous summer tour of the USA, then played two games in two days at the weekend. All of football is culpable for the amount of games played because the money men know more games equals more money.
The best thing they could do is get rid of a large proportion of international breaks, especially friendlies. Also England should scrap the League Cup. It's a trophy won by the team with the best second eleven or in our case last year having easy draws. Even the lower league clubs don't take it seriously.
The best thing they could do is get rid of a large proportion of international breaks, especially friendlies. Also England should scrap the League Cup. It's a trophy won by the team with the best second eleven or in our case last year having easy draws. Even the lower league clubs don't take it seriously.
The difference would be that we would celebrate 85th minute winners instead of 94th minute winners. I don't honestly think that side of things would change, to be honest. When fans can see the clock is running down, a winner at that late stage would feel exactly as amazing as it currently does.
It's a fair point, but it's also not really 'right' to be playing for around 60 minutes in a 90 minute game. Something has to change regarding that gamesmanship side of things. The players have to see that side of things from the fan perspective. It's really boring to see the timewasting and it creates a greater disconnect between the fans and players, at a time when football is really, really fecking expensive.
On a side-note, longer game times means the coaches have to rotate better. Not really a problem from my point of view, as football has gone towards larger squad sizes anyway.
Less games, less money then for the players would be fair then, Varane?
The bits you have mentioned are still timewasting and slow the game down by varying degrees, depending on the situation within games. E.g. teams that are winning 1-0 taking extra long to line up a goal kick, as an example. E.g. Taking 30 seconds or up to a minute for goal kicks is really unnecessary. It happens far too often and the refs let far too much go. Goalkeepers never get punished for holding onto the ball for longer than the allotted time, as another example. I agree that I'd like to see games get analysed to see just how much time is wasted and I'd welcome more information about this.
There is a law against it. It’s delaying the restart of play and is a cautionable offence. Refs just haven’t been doing their job. The solution to that isn’t to not do anything. If implemented properly it can only be a good thing.
I didn’t pay a huge amount of attention during the second half but there were 6 stops for subs and a goal scored before 90 was up. Previously that should’ve been a 30 second stoppage for each of those. Now they’re adding the actual time taken rather than an arbitrary set amount of time for each. I don’t see how that isn’t a good thing. How many games are restarted within 30 seconds for goals and subs? Not many I’d bet.
Don't have a figure for the increase in the total number of games but as per Fifpro the actual congestion has increased even within the last few years:
Their recommendation seems to essentially be mandatory rest after a certain number of consecutive games within a certain timeframe. So enforced rotation, effectively.
I don't know there's a study (edit : Someone mention FIFPro in the message just before) so won't link the listicles I found googling this. It would seem the most active player in a season generally does 70+ appearances for club and country (Bruno and Mount appear near the top for last season IIRC) generally 50+ in club and 10-15 international caps. Some years it drops around 65. I would guess this doesn't include club pre-season games and such ?
That seems fairly consistent since 2000, haven't found numbers for before that but then again I think the worries of busy schedules date back to that time.
Maybe players did that many games in the 70s, 80s... but I don't think anyone will deny the intensity is not the same today as then.
Someone mentioned top teams being a little hypocritical by not actually using the depth of their rosters come match day. It's maybe true but I'm not a big fan of top teams having much deeper squads to begin with, it's just another lever decreasing competition in my eyes.