I don’t think it’s comparable to basketball, but I’m also not a basketball fan so I wouldn’t object to the same standard being adopted by basketball, either: game doesn’t end until the current possession ends after the clock hits zero.
Think about the NFL for comparison. They hike the ball, and start running the play. The clock hits zero but they keep playing until the play is over. Imagine how intrusive it would be if the game ended immediately at zero. I think that’s a better comparison than basketball.
So much to unpack here. I’m going too go out on a limb and guess that most posters in this thread are Americans. And you really don’t understand the game.
You’'re being a bit provincial and predigest here. Can you give me an example of a country that is so poor they don’t have Bluetooth, or failing that, radio…
No.
Yes. We don’t want it. Our game, our rules.
Absolutely not.
This here post is the one that makes sense.
The whole point is that it adds a big, very big, unpredictable factor to the game. Football/Soccer isn’t about being “fair.” Should it go the same way as hockey, it would always be reduced to rules lawyering and the unpredictable factor is what makes it so exciting: Morocco in the semi? Impossible. Brazil was set to win according to all experts - didn’t happen. Germany out that early - WTF?
We don’t want predictable (even if we will say so publicly). The fight against VAR went on for years and was finally added in the hope of appeasing Americans who don’t understand the sport, in turn bringing in TV money.
I am very worried about this. To me the continually running nature of soccer is one of the best things about it.
I have no doubt that once we had a stop/start clock there would be various “automatic” stoppages for commercials within 5 years. Because once the clock is stopped, why not?
Also, I just don’t really think it’s a problem. It bothers casual fans used to American sports but I’ve never heard a serious soccer fan complain about a running clock. They complain that refs are crap at adding time back on for time wasting - but that’s a different issue than the running clock itself.
Can’t really answer this moronic anti-American diatribe outside the Pit. I’ll just note that it looks especially ridiculous when you deny that the answer is “tradition”, but then turn around and whine “our game, our rules” like a petulant child.
I don’t really care if soccer implements anything to change how they manage the clock and overage time. But there isn’t anything inherent in having an extra official or two doing so that would break the game or is untenable.
There are two issues being conflated here, whether the clock should ever “stop” and whether it should be in public view. The first is just semantics; it doesn’t matter from any practical point of view whether the clock stops for two minutes while someone is down, or whether the clock keeps running and two extra minutes are added at the end. I don’t think commercials have anything to do with it; there’s nothing except anticipated fan outrage stopping them from cutting to commercials now while a player is getting treatment.
I don’t see any good reason the clock shouldn’t be in public view. I think it would improve the game, although I agree that it isn’t really that big a deal.
Go ahead and pit me then. I’ll report you for the “petulant child” jab in the meanwhile.
If “tradition” was the answer then the rules wouldn’t have changed in the last 25/50/100 years. But they have. It’s just that we’ve found some rules to be worth keeping, others have been ditched.
As for Anti-american? Hogwash. Americans, in general, have time and time again, shown that they don’t understand soccer. Most of the world don’t understand cricket. For the casual Non-american viewer both baseball and to a lesser extent Football, is totally opaque. I regard the obsession with statistics in baseball with the same bafflement many Americans wonder about timekeeping in soccer.
And to widen the perspective: Our game, our rules [change phrasing depending on subject], is the standard reply when anyone not from the U.S. asks about something in the U.S. that they don’'t understand. e.g. the innumerable threads on metric vs. imperial and especially C vs F: *Fahrenheit makes just more sense, since…
ETA:
But it is. In huge numbers, prominently seen for the whole stadium. It’s just that the ref ignores it.
Does soccer have a concept of offsetting penalties? Regardless, it looks to me like both @Charlie_Tan and @Thing.Fish are escalating this far beyond the level of a friendly discussion. I’ll not Warn either of you at this point, but you’re both instructed to keep things more civil. If you feel like you need to, perhaps take a day or two off from this thread, and come back when you’ve calmed down.
I’ll grant that the percentage of Americans who understand soccer is lower than in Europe or South America, but we have the sixth richest league in the world and we routinely get out of the group stage at the World Cup. It’s not like we just discovered this game.
I’ll also grant that FIFA and the big European leagues are all about chasing the TV money and don’t care about trampling on tradition, but why is that specifically America’s fault? They’re pandering to China, the Middle East, and lots of other places with a relatively recent soccer tradition as well. It wasn’t Americans who came up with the idea for the European Super League!
Whatever you do, don’t explain why stopping the clock would kill the game, just like it didn’t for rugby. That would make things too clear for this American. Thanks in advance.
The problem with showing the clock is that there isn’t actually a clock to show. Additional time isn’t the result of the ref starting and stopping his or her clock, noting that the official clock is nearing match end but theirs has X minutes left and then announcing X minutes of additional time is needed to compensate for interruptions. It’s the result of the ref making note of the rough time or number of a limited selection of play interruptions and adding compensatory time at the end at their absolute discretion.
Yes, of course it’s tradition (I mean, that’s what any rule in sports is), but it isn’t just the tradition of not having a clock, it’s that introducing a public clock would fundamentally change the rule in question.
Switching from marking additional minutes in a little notebook with a pencil to marking them in a digital notebook isn’t the fundamental seachange you might think it is.
To me it also sounds like a peculiar way of keeping the pretense that this sport played for organizations making billions by men making millions is still the working class game for which all you need is a flat lot and a ball and sort of keeping time in your head as you go along. But really, if the pro game has VAR, a visible clock-of-record sounds like nothing compared to that.
The big change is taking what is now rough notes and the refs discretion and making it public.
What I don’t get is this clamor for changing a rule that few fans of the sport, or the multi-million businesses catering to them, think needs changing. Sports have different traditions and rules, precise play time is only a feature of some of them.
VAR is used to judge situations that involve precise rules that are difficult to judge in the heat of the moment that TV and pro-sports photographer cameras create a record of making erroneous ones big news. Situations that can turn a game completely around with a single call. A wrong penalty call, an annulled goal, etc.
Those have always been the cause of much post game debate, but with all the unofficial documentation there can now be clear evidence that a ref made the wrong call and cost someone a win.
Whether there is 4 or 7 minutes of added time doesn’t have the same explosive power.
But as someone who hasn’t bothered watching a soccer match for a couple of years, I’ll leave you to your game of “you’re using the wrong rules for your sport!”. I might start a thread on how tennis should just count 1,2,3 instead of 15,30,40 though.
I’ll take your word on the relative clamor (or lack thereof) - I don’t follow the sport. But if there is, my guess is that there is an increased need/demand for transparency with the increasing prevalence of legal sport gambling. Add in the scandal-plagued history of FIFA, and soccer could likely use a boost in public trust.
Say a match kicks-off at 12 noon. Anyone with a watch will know exactly when the half ends:
12:45 pm.
At any given moment everyone knows exactly how much time is left in a half.
Then the referee will add some more time as needed to make up for all the stoppages and that amount of time is displayed for all to see on a electronic board raised high by the fourth official.
It’s easy to keep track of. No need to state the obvious up on
a scoreboard, but most grounds do it anyway, I think. A running clock starting at 0:00.
So you take my word on this rule, because you don’t follow the sport, and then you declare it “likely” there is a public trust issue based on … what?
FIFA mainly organizes international tournaments and I’ve yet to see any accusations of them making decisions that influence the result of individual matches. The issues with FIFA are mainly about them being overpaid and corrupt in making bad decisions on where a tournament should be played, not about interfering with the games.
I don’t take your word on the rule - I take your word on whether or not there is clamoring to change it.
I base my comments that there is a public trust issue against FIFA because FIFA has been embroiled in scandal since forever. I’m not under the impression any of that has been regarding ref bias altering the outcome of games via manipulation of the game clock’s overage time awards.
I’m generally of the mindset that eliminating avenues of officiating bias is a boon for any and all sports. This doesn’t seem to be a particularly high impact change to the game, and would close a substantial gray area.