Soccer Fans: How Would You Feel About Using A Countdown Clock?

The Game Room
21

If the ambiguity bothers you, then it seems to me that you are, in fact, looking to Americanize it.

The obsession with being able to track every single second, and with being able to stop and start the game at will, is precisely what seems to define so many American sports. Did the ball leave his hand before the shot clock expired? Did they get the play off before the two-minute warning? Will they be able to take a knee and run out the clock, or does the other team have enough time-outs left to force them to punt? Quick, call a timeout before the other team gets their hands on the ball!

This is, quite frankly, a solution in search of a problem. The game works just fine as it is, and i can think of no real improvement that would result from changing the clock system as you’ve described it here.

22

One of the reasons technology has been rejected for so long is that many felt it important the game at all levels was played in exactly the same way.

Are there going to be ‘countdown clocks’ all over local parks? No.

So this would just act as another to create differences in how the sport is played at one level with how the rest of us play it. Not to mention across all cultures and monetary variances.

Second point; the game has done pretty well without.

23

I think it would be fairly easy. Ref stops his watch as and when he needs to and gives the team a two minute warning or similar. What else do they need to know?

24

Unless Real Madrid are playing, see 2014 CL Final.

25

The uncertainty of knowing how much time is left in a game (and that the subjective decision on when the game ends is left up to a ref) is probably the most annoying thing about pro soccer (with close competition from flopping and mindless chanting from the stands (sort of like a perpetual version of baseball’s wave, which is annoying in its own right).

Nope, nothing “American” about it. For one thing, baseball has no time limitations parameters, which is both good and bad. Other sports with well-defined time limits include basketball, which when last I checked seemed to be popular around the world.

We have very good technology for determining if last-second scores are legit, and it doesn’t take long for decisions to be made.

“The game works just fine as it is” is the cry of every sports fan/journalist/observer who just can’t accept that altering dumb embedded rules might actually be an improvement.

26

I thought it ended with the retirement of SAF.

27

But how is it an improvement? People who go to soccer matches know that the half ends at 45, and the game at 90.

Stoppage time is announced, so you know approximately when the half/game will be over.

What are you suggesting for stoppage? The referee somehow signals to the pressbox to set the clock to 4:17 at the second it goes to zero? Remember that there is no break in the action.

And I’ve always assumed that the referee will actually add additional time to the stoppage period if someone gets hurt (or there is an excessive break for some other reason). How are going to handle that? Right now, presumably the referee is just doing it on the fly.

28

SAF=Sir Alex Ferguson.

29

Except it doesn’t. The game ends when the ref says it ends. He’ll tell someone else, who tells someone else, who tells the crowd, how much stoppage time he’s going to add, but that’s still almost entirely at his discretion.

So instead, start the game at 90:00. At 85:45, Brazilian player PuPú gets kicked in the nuts and goes down in agony. Ref presses his button, wirelessly connected to the stadium clock, and pauses the clock while Medical attends to him. Once everything is sorted out, he starts the clock again, play resumes, Bob’s your uncle. Repeat as needed.

Edited to add: Or count forward instead of down. Either way, stop the damned clock when play stops. Don’t let the ref just add time as he sees fit. WAY too much power for the ref.

It’s a major improvement. Fans know exactly when the half/game end, not approximately when. The ref’s discretionary powers are greatly reduced. When the clock hits zero, the game is over, regardless of where the ball is.

30

A more accurate method of timekeeping certainly makes sense. But the over-preoccupation with timekeeping was one of the factors that led me away from American sports a few years ago. Trying to time things down to tenths and even hundredths of a second just seemed absurd to me.

Not to change the subject but I’ve often thought that American football could be played more efficiently without a clock at all.

31

I’m not really sure what problem you are attempting to fix here - but different strokes, I guess.

I (a casual fan) actually find it exciting when 4 minutes of stoppage is announced, the local team is on the attack, the clock reads 90:04:44 - are they going to get a shot?

Also, I’d point out that you don’t know exactly when an American football game is going to end. As long as the snap is before the horn, the offense can run around until the ball is downed. And if the clock expires on a defensive foul, they get another play. The world has not stopped.

32

Interesting. I like this. Adopt this in soccer. End of the stated stoppage time the game ends immediately as the ball goes out of play.

33

Why is this an “improvement?” YOU see it as important, but for God’s sake, 95%+ of the world’s soccer fans see no point to doing it, else it would have been done long ago. If the fans aren’t clamouring for it, why is it an “improvement?”

I’ve actually had experience with the concept of official time being kept on the stadium clock before. When I was announcing for the then D-III (later D-II) California Jaguars, the soccer league in question (the forerunner of the modern United Soccer League) ran a count-down clock with the referee signaling when time was “out” by crossing his arms above his head. It was a pain in the ass, frankly. And our large contingent of Hispanic fans never got why we were doing it. On at least one occasion, what appeared to be a good goal at the end of the half had to be chalked off for the fact that the time expired before it went in. Man, was there EVER a referee surrounded by more players? I doubt it.

Then, I coached high school in the late 2000s. Now, in high school at the time, the referee could take time “out” for some things. But trying to keep that co-ordinated with the stadium clock was more than most referees wanted to do. So we were simply asked to stop the clock with 2 min. left in each half, and then the referee signaled when time was over. Personally, I think that most of the referees simply hated the high school rules, and implemented their own “normal” soccer method for dealing with time “out” situations.

One of my enduring bugaboos about soccer is the propensity for the American fan to try and change the game, on the theory that the way we do sports in America is somehow superior. It’s a constant issue. Countdown instead of countup clocks. New ways to handle offside. New ideas for fouls. Changes to the field. You name it, “we”'ve suggested it. I have a suggestion: enjoy what the rest of the world does in this game and stop trying to Americanize it. Given how many people watch soccer elsewhere in the world, it’s hard to argue they are doing it “wrong.”

34

The ball can easily go for several minutes without going out of play. We see this all the time when someone wants to introduce a sub, and the sub stands at the sideline for six or seven minutes unable to get onto the field. :stuck_out_tongue:

35

I sign on unreservedly to everything said by DSYoungEsq, both about this issue in particular, and about (some) American soccer fans.

The attitude seems to be something like: “Hey, there’s this game that is, in the United States, wildly popular as a participant sport, especially among children, but is largely shunned by a considerable portion of the American population as a professional spectator sport. We ignore it for about three years and nine months out of every four years, and then spend three months both watching and mocking it. This sport is enjoyed on a daily basis by billions of people throughout the world, and is probably the single most popular team sport on the planet, at least if measured by its broad global distribution. It is played in professional settings by players making millions; it is played by schoolkids and college students, and by men and women; it is played on muddy fields and dusty lots and cramped back alleys by poverty-stricken children. Its rules are such that they remain basically the same at every level of the sport and, barring a few relatively minor adjustments, have remained quite consistent for decades. But because it doesn’t conform to the patterns that dominate American professional sports, there must be something wrong with it that those billions of global fans are just too blind to see.”

One thing that is worth noting is that there have been, over the past few years, some commentators and fans within soccer-mad countries like England calling for a more formal method of regulating the play clock, and especially for taking it out of the hands of referees. I’m not sure it would be the end of the world if they tightened up some of the ways that players can waste time, especially given the ever-increasing cost to fans, but i don’t think it needs the sort of stop-start clock management that characterizes sports like American football.

The one thing that would probably worry me more than anything about changing the clock system, and stopping the clock when the ball goes out of play, is the possibility it opens up for ad breaks during each half. If we’re stopping the clock now, why not leave it stopped for an extra sixty seconds so we can bombard you with commercials? And we’ll be back after this break for the Pepsi Throw-In, or the Samsung Goal Kick.

As you’re probably aware, this is pretty much how it works in rugby. The final siren sounds, but the play continues until there is a breakdown of some sort that causes a stoppage, or the ball leaves the field of play.

Of course, what you would have to do, like in rugby, is write the rules so that the defending team cannot bring play to a halt with a foul. So, if a rugby team is trying to score after the end of regulation time, the defending team can’t end the game just by coming up offside and tackling the ball carrier.

36

More transparency in the officiating seems like a good thing to me. Bring on the countdown clock.

37

But the ball rarely stays with one side for that length of time. If one is team is winning and they get possession after “time” has been signalled, they are free to boot it out and end the game. If it is a draw then the same applies and perhaps one side will be happy with that result and end the game or maybe we get 6 or 7 minutes of attacking play from both sides in an attempt to win the game. I don’t see a down side with either scenario.

eta - so, just as I and others have said…it would play out exactly like Rugby does and that seems to work perfectly well.