Day 13 – Clock

Topic Point: The game is 90 minutes with a running clock counting up.Fans, players, and coaches know how much time has elapsed, but they don’t knowhow much time is left. Only the referee does. Fans are informed about “stoppagetime”, time tacked onto the end of a half, via a digital display held up by the4^th official at the 45’ or 90’ marks. The added “stoppage time” isbased on the amount of time the game was “stopped”. This does not includenormal run-of-play pauses like simple fouls and out-of-bounds. However, yellowcards and red cards (also called bookings), goals, and injuries result inexcessive stoppage, and the officiating team determines how much additionaltime will be played beyond the 45 or 90 minutes. On television, this will beshown as a “+X” next to the running clock, with X representing the number ofadded minutes. You may see players complain and hear fans jeering if the clockexceeds 90+X!

Appendix 2 shows a table with a comparisonof sports, distance covered, and time (game clock, time-in-play, and elapsedtime). Taking note of this, along with the past few days (substitutions,time-outs, and the clock), tomorrow’s topic may illustrate better whyfootballers tend to milk a bit of the drama and pain associated with injuries.

Ted Lasso: Thereare multiple episodes where the match commentator, Arlo White, mentionsstoppage time. However, there is no significant attention drawn to the clock orstoppage time.

Soccer-related note: While it may seem to most American sports fans that the countdownclock is the obvious approach to timekeeping, there is a simple elegance andlogic to the elapsed-time clock.

·     One person can the keep theclock – the referee. While there is an officiating team, and the stoppage timeaddition is facilitated by assistant referees, the clock can be controlled byone person

·     There is no tedium to thetimekeeping. In football, ice hockey, and basketball, there is a team of peoplemanaging the clock. When there is a question as to when play stopped or otherclock disputes, the delay in restart due to video review can be significant anddetract from the game momentum. Sometimes the official has to use the PA systemto ask the timekeeper to add time back to the clock. All of this makes for atedious and inefficient system.

·     There is flexibility in theclock management. The official can add time due to delay tactics, or permit aplay to proceed to completion (no different than time expiring during a play inAmerican football or a buzzer-beater shot in basketball).

·     While fans, coaches, andplayers on one side (a team winning by one goal for example) may want the gameto end right at 90 minutes, the central referee has the discretion to end thegame, eliminating the confusion and frustration with clock disputes at the endof a match.

American Sports comparison: In American football, the last play of a quarter can continue afterthe clock reads 0:00. For the end of a game, that is especially dramatic.Similarly, a team can be credited for a basket after the time expires so longas the shot was taken before the buzzer. There is also the fact that the last10-30 seconds or so are sometimes not played in both American football andbasketball. While we Americans may not be accustomed to soccer’s format, thecount-up clock allows for the end-of-game dramatics to present itself at mostmatches, and the game is played until the final whistle.

Interactive:

In 2022, FIFA insisted that the ball-in-play time improve. They wanted to discourage time wasting. The measure to counter time wasting was to more strictly calculate the time elapsed after goals, injuries, red/yellow cards, substitutions, and other situations that result in the ball not being in play for an extended time. Since the tradition of the clock is to count up and not stop, thereby indicating elapsed time from the kick-off, the amount of stoppage time added at the end of a half or game would likely increase.
After imposing stricter calculation methods, we saw a radical increase in added time in the 2022 World Cup. This carried over into professional leagues as well. The graph below shows the increase in stoppage time added over the last 8 years, starting with the 2018 World Cup. The last two World Cups and two prominent professional leagues (EPL and La Liga) are illustrated.

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