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Trials to shorten football matches to 60 minutes could take place as early as this month, i can reveal.
The Portuguese Football Federation (FPF) wants to test the format at the Under 23 Revelation Cup, reducing matches to two 30-minute halves but only running the clock when the ball is live in play.
For the matches to be considered official trials they will need approval from the International Football Association Board, who determine and control the laws of the game. A source at Ifab told i that at this stage the proposal had not been discussed formally or gained official approval.
If, however, it gets the green light, the FPF will commission a university to analyse the data and produce a detailed report on the findings, taking in views of officials, coaches, players and fans who are part of the matches.
It is hoped that shortening matches but stopping the clock for breaks in play such as fouls, throw-ins and goal kicks will prevent time-wasting, force teams to play more football and improve the overall match experience.
The CIES Football Observatory, an independent research body, revealed in February that on average the ball was in play during games in 36 leagues across Europe for slightly under 60 minutes on average in matches analysed since the 2018-19 season.
Dutch Eredivisie games have had the most ball-in-play time, with an average of 63 minutes and 21 seconds. At the bottom of the list is the German second division – 2. Bundesliga – with 58 minutes and 46 seconds.
On average the ball is in play for 60 minutes and 59 seconds in Premier League games – placing the English top-flight ninth in the table – while the Championship is fourth from bottom, with 56 minutes and 32 seconds. One place below England’s second tier is the Scottish Premiership, with 55 minutes and 38 seconds.
In some individual matches the figures can be far lower. In October, during West Ham’s defeat to Brentford the ball was in play for only 41 minutes and 33 seconds. And the ball was in play for a mere 41 minutes and 33 seconds inAston Villa’s victory against Newcastle in August.
The numbers show that teams considered to play the most attractive football tend to keep the ball in play for longer. Around midway through the 2021-22 Premier League season, Manchester City were the only team in the top-flight to have an average ball-in-play time of over an hour, recording 60 minutes and 33 seconds. Liverpool were second, with 56 minutes and 37 seconds, followed by Chelsea, with 56 minutes and 54 seconds.
At the other end of the scale, Villa were bottom (51 minutes and 26 seconds), followed by Southampton (52 minutes and seven seconds) then Newcastle (52 minutes and 42 seconds).
Analysis: Why shortening matches isn’t as crazy as it sounds
The ball spent just 45min 16sec in play during Newcastle’s win over Everton in February (Photo: Getty)
Critics of shortening games often reach for the argument that football is the biggest sport on the planet, that the Premier League is club football’s (and one of England’s) largest brands, and that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
But football is not immune to time’s relentless disruption. Even the best innovators know they must adapt or die. Facebook is desperately trying not to become the next MySpace. One minute Blockbuster is renting DVDs to millions of people a month, the next Netflix is making them available online for a small monthly fee and Blockbuster’s entire business model collapses.
How the average person wants to consume football is totally different today from what it was 10 years ago, even more so than the 1990s when it was considered a fun weekend activity to walk the aisles of a Blockbuster store desperately trying to find a DVD among the thousands everyone would like.
During a recent conversation with Nuria Tarre, Manchester City’s head of marketing and fan experience, she explained that younger fans are increasingly coming to football via the Fifa video game franchise. And Tarre, who has decades of experience at the sharp end of innovation in telecommunications and new technologies, can recall when people were sceptical about the growth of mobile phones. Now it is a rarity to live without one.
“There are a lot more ways to consume the football experience when you see how younger audiences are interacting with online games today, even with Fifa,” she said. “For many fans, the first contact with football is actually through Fifa. That’s a video game experience. They enjoy it, then come to the real game.”
In the Fifa video game, matches last around six minutes per half; and when pros play, games tend to have scorelines familiar in real life. That’s quite a jump from enjoying matches of less than 15 minutes during which most of the time the ball is in play, to an hour-and-a-half when, for almost half the time, the ball is out of it.
At the very least, the technological and cultural changes created by the internet should give the brainstormers at Fifa, who ultimately control the game’s laws, pause for thought. If VAR is the way forward, should we accept that four to five minutes – around 6 per cent – of every game is lost to video referee decision-making, on top of all the other stoppages for goal kicks, throw-ins, corners, free-kicks?
What would happen if every club was forced to match City’s 60 minutes of actual football every match?
And why not explore and borrow from other wildly successful sports? Managers could have a limited number of time-outs to run special plays at crucial times, perhaps chasing a winner or an equaliser with seconds remaining. It could open up a whole new dynamic for the modern tactical masters – Guardiola, Tuchel, Klopp and whoever else joins them.
Look at the Super Bowl: on Sunday night the LA Rams beat Cincinnati Bengals with a touchdown scored with less than two minutes remaining and only prevented the Bengals from coming back with a stoppage in the final seconds. All four of this season’s NFL playoff quarter-finals went down to the wire.
Is it time football had a rethink?
