by Sutekh »
22 Jun 2017 08:34
Stranded Silver Fox How many minutes of football do you currently see?
Latest stats I can find quickly is for 2010-11. Time in play varied a lot ranging from 3 games with 44 mins of playing time up to 2 with 66.
Most games had around 54-57 mins of actual playing time.
http://www.soccermetrics.net/team-perfo ... n-football
OK, so let's look at this afresh then.
If the average game played today has 60 actual minutes of football (that is where the ball is being kicked about by a bunch of overpaid (mainly foreign) johnnies
) then how actually will it be changed?
The game still has to take place, there still will be a load of ball out of play, players falling over, injuries, refereeing stoppages, crowd not giving ball back, ball out of stadium and all that stuff.
I presume that under this 60 minute amendment the clock would automatically be stopped every time the ball leaves play or ref blows his whistle so, for example, instead of ball going out of play for a throw in and it taking 10 seconds for a player to throw it back while the clock carries on counting down the clock would be stopped as soon as the ball crosses the touchline and not restart until the player actually throws it back in.
Ergo, the supporter still ends up watching something happening for roughly 90-100 minutes in two roughly 45-50 minutes halves) only they would be guaranteed to see 60 minutes of actual play (and slightly longer if the ref also can't end the game until the ball goes out of play that final time).
TV wise, they can't break away for adverts etc. as they would still run the risk of missing action as they do today.
How available and how affordable is the technology to be able accurately implement it though? If it ever got the go ahead I would expect, in this country, that clubs in the top four divisions should be able to easily implement it (but then I would also have said that all teams in the top four divisions should have goaline technology, but it's not affordable so they don't) as having it implemented for just this competition or that division is nonsense.
Be good to see up to date quantifiable stats run across the divisions specifically to ascertain the average "ball in play time".