Football Should Learn from How Handball Handles Playing Time
With all of the recent controversies regarding the increased amount of extra time in football matches, which I’d say have just culminated with the statement that this season’s Champions’ League matches won’t be “burdened” with these norms, I’m just going to say that football should really learn from handball’s handling of playing time. If the target is an effective playing time of 60 minutes, then that’s what the time should be, making how much playing time is left clear for everyone, pretty much getting rid of controversies about how much was added and removing the pressure of this decision from referees.
Yes, handball isn’t overly strict about it, so the effective playing time is less than 60 minutes, but not by too much and what makes it much better is that the rules do a great job of getting rid of time wasting. The time is stopped if a medical team is called or a player otherwise seems to need help, if there’s a problem with the playing area that needs to be sorted out, if the referees want to watch a replay or discuss something with each other, other officials or the players, if there’s no ball to play with, if a player is sent off and in a number of other such moments. And if the referees are far more lenient earlier in the game or when the difference is greater, for example not stopping the time when players are getting ready for a throw or penalty or need more than a couple of seconds to retrieve a ball that went out of play, they’ll get increasingly stricter towards the end of the match, especially the score is tight, even setting back the time by a few seconds if it wasn’t stopped the instant play was stopped.
What’s more, the rules severely penalize players who even try to waste time, because stopping play can offer some time to rest and get into position and also break the opponents’ streak or concentration. Let’s set aside the fact that even wasting time while the ball is in play is forbidden, passing the ball more than a handful of times without shooting being banned, since that’s a rule that can’t have a place in football, but everything else probably should. Players who don’t immediately drop the ball and let the opponents take it when they’re required to lose possession are penalized, players for whom the medical team entered can’t return for a certain period, the play isn’t stopped for substitutions, so they must take place pretty much instantly or the team will be one or more players down…
This does bring me to some other rules that exist in other sports, including handball, and which should probably be also adopted by football, such as temporary substitutions or suspensions, and even to wondering why does football dominate so thoroughly in terms of popularity and interest, and also funding, in a good part of the world when other sports are, in truth, more interesting. But that’s a different matter, and this post is just a quick comment about these current discussions and controversies. So I’ll just end it by saying that I do agree with this push to increase the effective playing time, and the fact that it’s just now reaching 60 minutes out of 90 shows how desperately needed it is, but there are much better ways to do it. Sure, these would be bold, drastic changes, but I’m tempted to say that their time has come.
