The refs (in all leagues that I am aware of) are assigned by the FA. Where has FIFA ever said that they wanted to shorten the game? Stoppage time is only awarded for time lost due to injuries, goal celebrations etc so that there is a full 90 minutes of play.
IFAB has been talking about it at least since 2017 (and has some FIFA people interested as well it appears)
Florentino Perez, the Real Madrid president and the chairman of the failed European Super League project, warned people earlier this year that changes need to be made in order to save football.
Perez said evidence shows “young people find football matches too long” and “not interesting”.
He said at the time that “we might have to make the football matches shorter”.
Perez is one person and we have already seen this year how the world of football reacts to his revolutionary decisions. The 60 minute match will never happen in our lifetimes. As far as I can tell none of the real PTB have spoken in favor of this. The fans will never support this.
If this will become the rule, they won’t get any new fans, but lose almost all the old ones. Good luck with that. It’s as idea as asinine as the Super League. No wonder both came from Perez.
IFAB doesn’t count as the PTB, I see. And if no one of the PTB isn’t interested then why are they testing it in this youth tournament?
Evil mustachioed Americans again?
“It will never happen” pronouncement spotted. Those keep me warm at night, regardless of subject.
Maybe we should watch a game with the new clock rules before we judge. I bet we don’t even notice a difference. Well, except for stalling no longer working.
A: It’s the Americans?
B: No, it’s not. Here are all the Europeans advocating it.
A: So what? It’s probably the secret Americans! It’s always the Americans.
B:VAR, handball changes, 5 subs, etc…
A: LALALALALALA can’t hear you.
My opinion: Time wasting is a problem, and this would help with that. Ostensibly the ref is already keeping track of the clock and stoppage time isn’t really at the discretion of the ref so this shouldn’t make a difference. As long is it doesn’t end with NBA style stoppages to check if the clock is 0.02 seconds off it’s probably a decent test run.
CONCACAF Gold Cup is going on; would sure be nice to see some nation other than Mexico or USA win it this time.
At the moment, both are second in their respective groups, with Canada probably having a better chance to tie the U.S. than El Salvador has to tie Mexico. If Canada goes through on top of group B, we could well have the U.S., Mexico and Honduras all on the same side of the bracket.
Anyone seen Qatar play this year, either Gold Cup or friendlies? I wonder how well they will turn up for the World Cup.
I watched them in a hairy draw against Panama. I’d compare them to a strong MLS team at best, but they were fun to watch.
At least this year, CONCACAF teams have given more weight to the Nations League, so it would be a good year for another country to step up.
I’m now seeing reports that FIFA is denying that they ever planned to do this. I can’t find the denial on the website, on the other hand I can’t find the original announcement on their website either.
Well… aside from Mexico who brought a mostly A team (a few big name players are off at the Olympic). That’s mostly because Tata Martino’s job may be in jeopardy (esp after losing the Nations League Finals)
Can you explain why you think it would be so so different? I mean, if you think it would be worse, sure, fine. If you think it’s stupid to change anything at all, sure, fine (although I’m curious what you thought when they introduced the “keeper can’t use hands when ball is passed back” rule, which seems to have been an overwhelming success).
But “abomination”? “It would even be safe from a lot of people who previously watched real football.”? How often would anyone even notice? If you were watching a match on TV with the sound off and with something obscuring the on-screen clock, how would you possibly even tell the difference?
You can’t watch (or at least I can’t) watch a match without checking the clock, knowing how much time is left is extremely important, if you are winning 1-0 at the start of the first half you can’t relax too much, as opposed to the same result 35 minutes into the second half.
Stopping the clock and making the halves last 30 minutes completely changes the flow of the game, making it so the goalkeeper cannot use his hands on a back pass is a minor (and useful) change compared to that.
And that leads us to the root of the problem, the goalkeeper rule fixed something: too much back passing.
That 30 minutes per half rule is not needed for anything, (except as a prelude to inserting commercial breaks), is not something the players want, is not something the fans want, is just another harebrained scheme to fundamentally “fix” something that currently works perfectly thank you very much.
How would it change the flow of the game? Honest question. It would eliminate the incentive for wasting time while the ball is out of play, which is IMO good. It would also stop the trailing team from needing to rush so much to get the ball back in play, which doesn’t seem like an important difference to me. Getting rid of silliness like players fighting with the goalkeeper for the ball after a late goal would seem like a positive change.
It’s simply not the same thing to play 45+n minutes with the clock runing all the time, than to play 30 minutes of “referee defined” clock time, if you don’t see the difference I don’t know how to explain it .
I think some here underestimate how football is a quasi-religion to great parts of the world, at least a philosophy. And the #1 tenet of football philosophy in Germany is:
“The ball is round, and the game lasts 90 minutes”
So this would break law number one. We could as well play with square balls.
That seems a weird comment. I’m not sure I agree with the rule experimentation, but it’s obviously being thought about in response to time wasting. Maybe it isn’t that much of an issue in Europe, but watch any South American or Central American match and you’ll see the Gold Medal in time wasting. People pretending they’ve been shot or their legs fell off in the last 30 minutes of a 90 min match, etc.