I think you’re right. I have suddenly become concerned with an epidemic of time-wasting. But that’s a worst case scenario. It’s not the time-wasting in regular 45 minutes that bothers me as much as that which happens in the added period, the few times it does happen. Apart from that, the system is fine as it is.
What in the world is wrong with calling it futbol? It’s the Spanish term for it, and allows you to still call it football without the ambiguity, so people won’t yell at you for calling it soccer.
Plus, with the whole goooooool meme, is it really surprising that a lot of Americans think of the game as a Latin American sport?
Baseball, the great American pastime, has a bit of counting up as well. Innings are labeled 1 through 9, for example. Strikes and balls are counted as how many you have, not how many you have left. Bases are labeled from 1st, 2nd, 3rd in that order.
In hockey, the stadium clock might be counting down, but the official record of when things happen is scored by counting up.
Soccer certainly isn’t alone in utilizing a counting up strategy.
And again BigT pulls through for me. 
I simply figured it was an expedient way to ask the question. I’ve only ever noticed the timer on Spanish broadcasts (Univision and others)
But seriously, frankly, the entire “We are going to leave you guessing” aspect of the game time is at best archaic.
There are better, smarter ways to time the game.
But, if they want to be stupid about it, and have people draw conclusions based on that…
They do add stoppage time to stoppage time when necessary. Only last night, in the Ukraine - Sweden game, I think they signalled three minutes of added time but actually played about five minutes, because there were some interruptions and/or substitutions.
But you may be right that it is not always calculated as accurately as stoppages in normal time, and sometimes referees do blow too early because of that.
Dear 'mericans
You can dumb down every sport, call it whatever you want and have fun.
However; DO NOT COMPLAIN about how we play our sports.
Regards,
The rest of the World
That’s a bit harsh. It’s their sport too. They’re getting quite good at it, if you hadn’t noticed.
Sure it’s harsh.
Somehow there is a high % of people in the US that like to complain about things they don’t understand. I like to complain about that 
I would like everybody to know the following points about football (the kind you play with your feet).
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In a normal game there are ~2.5 goals. This is enough. Football doesn’t become more ‘fun’ to watch with more goals.
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In a high % of all finals the competing teams are closely matched and there is more incentive to not lose than to win. This leads to a high occurance of penalty shootouts in those finals. This is also o.k. it is how football has been since forever and is exciting like a thriller from Hitchcock is exciting : the anticipation, the fear etc.
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There are referee errors: get over it. Pausing the game to watch footage of what happened is not more fun than bitching about it, in fact I think bitching about the ref is an essential part of football.
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And the thing about the clock: there are two halves of 45 mins in a 90 min game, the game is finished when the ref says it is. This is not going to change anytime soon.
And indeed the USA is getting better at it, they are almost as good as Ghana:)
Having the timer go up means anybody who has a clock can time a game. Having it count down would mean that people would need clocks with countdowns, which didn’t use to be anywhere near as common.
You should see our political discussions.
Don’t know about Futbol but hockey games in Europe start at 00 and end at 20. Whereas in N. America the clock starts at 20 and counts down to 00. Either way the result is 20 minutes.
No, there aren’t. One of the integral parts of the sport is the idea that you don’t end the match in the middle of something interesting. Giving the referee a bit of discretion allows him to hold off the whistle if one team is in with a chance of scoring.
Anyway, the “smarter” methods- presumably meaning the split-second precision that US sports aim for- really aren’t. Basketball clocks count down tenth of a second, and the officials argue about how many tenths should be put back on the clock at the end as though they are somehow capable of distinguishing things to the tenth of a second. It’s ridiculous.
For the record, I’m an “'merican” and I don’t mind the up-counting clock, but I don’t get how our sports are dumbed down because we care about fixing referee errors or change the rules now and then or have a debate about how to time the games. If you don’t mind “rest of the world,” we’ll continue to “complain” whether you like it or not.
And like Ximenean said, it’s our sport too.
I don’t think he’s talking about instant replay. Lots of rest-of-world sports use it: cricket, both rugby disciplines, and field hockey, to name a few. FIFA also considered it, but Sepp Blatter doesn’t like it so it won’t happen until he dies.