Time-wasters? We need a timekeeper...

IMAGINE going to the cinema to watch the 65th instalment of Star Wars, the prequel to the sequel to the spin-off that… ah, who knows? You’ve got your £35 pick and mix. Your six-litre bucket of Fanta. Now for two hours of dubiously scripted escapism from a galaxy far, far away.

But instead of two hours, you get 45 minutes. The rest of the time is taken up by commercial breaks. Would you, having shelled out £15 for a ticket, find that acceptable?

If not, why should football supporters? Manchester United fans paid between £55 and £325 to watch their team’s 1-0 defeat to Atletico Madrid in midweek. Yet during the final half hour, the ball was in play for just 11 minutes and 33 seconds.

“We controlled the game very well,” said Atletico boss Diego Simeone, right, and nobody controls a game quite like him.

Over the course of a successful decade in the Spanish capital, the Argentine has earned a reputation for cynicism and s***housery that makes Jose Mourinho look like Gary Lineker.

Pinching yards. Feigning injury. Intimidating officials. Atletico deployed every tool in the box at Old Trafford, and - as ever - prevailed.

To some, Simeone is a Robin Hood figure, skilfully skirting the edge of legality to bloody the noses of football’s elite. Atletico have consistently overachieved under his yoke, and beaten several teams whose resources dwarf their own.

Good for them. But good for the game? Hardly. If a team can succeed by deliberately ruining the spectacle and cheating the viewing public, there is something wrong with the rules. Atletico are an extreme example. Every team on the planet has exaggerated an injury or delayed a restart in protection of a slender lead.

Protection

Under Graham Westley, Stevenage became infamous for their ‘tea break’, a tactically-timed injury at the mid-point of the half that allowed fluids and instructions to be delivered from the bench. During one game at Kidderminster Harriers, the PA announcer mockingly played the Casualty theme tune as the physio trotted out.

Whenever Tugay, the old Blackburn Rovers midfielder, was substituted, he would remove his shinpads, wave to the crowd, shake the referee’s hand and tell him - in great detail - what a wonderful job he’d done.

Many would argue that gamesmanship is a skill, a necessary part of professional sports, and to suggest otherwise is naively idealistic. But the same things were said in support of the backpass, a rule that facilitated egregious time-wasting. Its abolition in the wake of Italia 90, and the subsequent improvement in the spectacle, did more to popularise the game than any all-seater ground or glitzy marketing campaign. Who is to say a clampdown on time wasting wouldn’t be equally transformative?

One obvious remedy would be to stop the clock every time the ball goes dead, as is the case in the NFL. Even without time-wasting, however, the ball is rarely in play for more than 60 minutes of an average match. Pausing for every stoppage would increase the physical load on players by 50 per cent, an unsustainable amount that would negatively impact on quality. Games could be reduced from 90 to 60 minutes but, frankly, that is too revolutionary to ever fly.

Solution

A better solution would be to appoint a specialist timekeeper. Modern referees must keep pace with ever-faster players, apply ever-changing rules, manage the emotions of 22 competitive sportsmen and attempt to withstand the influence of a crowd.

To expect a ref to accurately assess and record every stoppage is unrealistic and - as the four minutes of injury time awarded at Old Trafford illustrate - ineffective.

A timekeeper, operating from the stand, would have no such trouble. They could log the exact time taken for a sub to leave the field. The exact amount of time spent disputing a penalty.

And if a team kept the ball dead for three of the four additional minutes, as Atletico did, a timekeeper would just add them again, impervious to a wrist-tapping manager.

It wouldn’t even need to be an exact science. Just enough to work as a deterrent. Because once enough boards were hoisted showing 15 minutes of injury time, the amateur thesps would quickly realise their prostrations were pointless. And the game would be better for it.