We Timed Every Game. World Cup Stoppage Time Is Wildly Inaccurate | Hacker News Reader

We Timed Every Game. World Cup Stoppage Time Is Wildly Inaccurate

fivethirtyeight.com

39 pointspmcpinto19 comments

Football (soccer), is not an exact game, on purpose, the rules empower the referee to make judgement calls in order to encourage the "flow" of the game, to make it a "good" game.

The explicit rule of "stoppage time" is that the referee adds time on to the end of the match to makeup for time lost to stoppages (e.g. time spent on injuries, goal celebrations, etc).

But for example, if a game is spiraling out of control and every stoppage of play is elongated by fighting between the players, the ref may decide not to add on any time and to end the game right at 90. This seems backwards to a lot of American's used to by-the-book sports, but that's the spirit of Football.

A more concrete and common example is the Advantage rule, if (in the referee's mind), stopping play for a foul will hurt the team which was fouled, they will acknowledge that it happened but not stop play, throwing their arms forward and yelling "Advantage".

soccer is a rubbish game, at the world cup level. I stopped watching because in the world cups, the referee's often call against the African teams. They also call on behalf of certain teams that are expected to win, but the call against African teams is ridiculous.

You seem to have gone in with a chip already on your shoulder, so I suppose it's no great loss that you think it's "rubbish".

Full disclosure: I'm Nigerian and have followed this world cup avidly, paying enough attention to note that a pretty even distribution of teams has been well or hard done by VAR and the referee.

Right, can you tell me why Nigeria didn't get awarded the penalty kick?

Blaming referees for loses is a time honoured tradition of any kind of football fan all over the world. I think I've never seen a loss that wouldn't be blamed on a referee at some point.

Thanks for continuing the tradition :)

Another example is that the if the ref has ~20 seconds left in stoppage time, but the winning team has an offensive corner kick, the ref will just end the game. The last seconds have no impact on the result, but would come up as an inaccuracy in this study.

Have to disagree up to a point. There's nothing good about players playing time at the end of the game by laying on the field "injured" and walking away from the field as if they had concrete around their feet. The flow of the game will be in this case very bad and should not be awarded. If they stopped the clock every time the game is on hold, this kind of nonsense would be significantly less frequent.

That‘s a very American, footbally viewpoint. Few Europeans would expect or even want a „pure play“ time of 90 minutes.

European football doesn‘t have strictly delimited borders between play time and off time. Not like American football where a clock is stopped and everybody regroups in a neat and perfectly pre-planned formation.

The referee may signal a foul and a player may execute it immediately, or wait a bit, or wait even longer. In that moments, people don‘t have a clear conception of whether it is play time, until it has happened.

Not to speak of the nightmare handling exact measurements in practice.

> hat‘s a very American, footbally viewpoint. Few Europeans would expect or even want a „pure play“ time of 90 minutes.

Except that time in play + expected stoppage in their charts isn’t constant, and is only rarely over 70 minutes. The highest (78 minutes for Brazil – Costa Rica) is especially interesting in that both actual play time and expected stoppage are both unusually high

Does this seem to mirror European politics or culture? Where does the tolerance for this come from? As an American, it is baffling to have that much uncertainty introduced by external entities.

Maybe you can see it mirrored in civil vs. common law? My working theory is that peoples used to Napoleon’s style of law are much more comfortable handing over authority to a centralized organ rather than a book. It may also have to do with carholicism (central organ) vs. evangelicism (book). Personally as a (catholically raised) Swiss I do prefer the former (even with Swiss culture being rather anti-authoritarian historically) as it has more failsaves against the bad parts of unchangeable books - I rather trust that people can be talked to when necessary than someone having come up with the perfect set of rules in advance.

The day they add exact play timing to football is the day it transitions from a show to a sport, which would take away like 50% of its followers. This uncertainty is what makes people angry and contributes to its success.

You clearly have never played it. Footballers are athletes of the first order, and football is so popular because everyone can play, not because it’s on TV. From the mountains of Nepal to the grassy parks of England to the rocky plains of Africa, you only need a couple of poles and a ball and you are in business. No fancy armours, no need for tools and equipment - just a ball and your skills. That is the essence of football, that’s the essence of real sports.

A lot of Olympic disciplines are just shows: convoluted exercises for the benefit of spectators, like synchronised swimming, gymnastics, skating and so on; football is all about the game itself, you can play it without audiences and it will still mean everything to players. That’s what sport is all about.

Half of football (soccer) is in the positioning. It happens in "dead" time as well, so the time isn't really dead.

If we calculated the dead time and added it to the stoppage time exactly - the most boring matches would drag forever, and the most exciting matches would barely change. Why lengthen the torture?

An alternative view to all the naysayers here who say that the loosey-goosey way football does time is part of the charm of the game.

On football fan sites lots of people bring up the idea of more precise timekeeping - 35 minute halves with the clock stopped when play has stopped. This is often offered as a solution to teams that, upon gaining an unexpected lead, will waste time at free kicks, throw-ins, and injuries. They do this confident in the knowledge that the referee will never add on more than 3 minutes at the end barring something truly unusual, but they will have wasted far more than 3 minutes.

Super interesting point that the ball is dead for 43% of the time but the game doesn't feel dead during these periods. Its a perfect contrast to american football - both have time where the ball is technically dead. But in am football people are running on and off the field, in the huddle, standing still at the line, etc. While in soccer, during a dead ball players are still sprinting around, actively playing out strategy, etc.

It does feel dead. Like hurry up with the kick and quit standing around unless you're going to DD stoppage time.

I think this is a classic case of consistency over accuracy, and there is nothing wrong with that. I actually prefer when they don't even say how much extra time there even is.

I think they erred on how they calculated the time. things like throw ins, free kicks etc are within gameplay so not counted against the clock. Very american footballish to view 'futbol' time.

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