Law 7
One of the things that I love most about the sport of soccer is that compared to essentially every other sport, a match starts when it's supposed to and ends within the actual time limit. The reason for this is that unlike other sports, the clock never stops in a soccer match, and so there are never pauses for commercials, never endless halves that go on and on because of timeouts, etc.
A full-length soccer match is scheduled for 90 minutes. It is divided into two halves, which are 45 minutes long each, with a 15 minute halftime break. There are a couple of features of the clock in soccer that make it unusual when compared to most sports:
1. The clock runs up, instead of down. A soccer match, when it begins, starts time at zero, and counts up to 45. After halftime, the clock starts at 45 minutes and counts up to 90.
2. The clock virtually never stops. The only thing that might cause a clock stoppage would be a very serious injury that requires a very long time to deal with. Otherwise, the clock is always running. At the end of each half, the referee has the authority to add time onto the clock to make up for any game stoppages due to injury, the ball going out of bounds, etc. This is traditionally called injury time or stoppage time, and usually lasts from 1 - 5 minutes. The amount of injury time played is declared by the official when there are 1-2 minutes left in the half. Injury time is usually noted by writing out the half time number, followed by a plus sign and the injury time. So if three minutes were added to the end of the first half, it would traditionally be written 45 + 3.
Because there are no stoppages, generally speaking a 90 minute match will take a total of a little under two hours to play, every single time; 45 minutes for each half, 15 minutes for half time, and between five and ten minutes of injury time total. Compare to American football, in which a theoretically 60 minute game takes over three hours, and basketball, where a 60 minute game usually take 150 minutes to play. Modern baseball games can take over four hours!
The other effect of having no stoppages means no commercial breaks; because of this, teams generally get their sponsorship money in other ways, such as taking sponsorship money for advertisements on jerseys, or plastering the side of the pitch with ads.
The other thing to know about game length: any match that can end in a draw will finish after injury time at the end of 90 minutes if the score is even. However, if the match is tied and CANNOT end in a draw (e.g., the match determines who moves on in a tournament), an additional 30 minutes is played to determine a winner. This is called extra time, and it is treated as two mini halves of 15 minutes each, with a 15 minute halftime between them. The referee is empowered to add injury time onto the ends of these halves as well, though usually it is much less time. Teams do not get any special dispensation for extra time; they can still only use three subs total for the match, for example. If the game is still drawn after extra time, then a tie-breaking procedure is used to resolve the deadlock (penalty kicks, match replay, etc.).
Law 8: What happens to start the game
All soccer matches start with a kickoff. The ball is placed on the center line of the pitch, and each time lines up all 11 of their players in their own halves. Generally a coin toss determines which team kicks off first, and the losing side will kickoff in the second half. Kickoffs are also used whenever a goal is scored; the team that conceded the ball take the kickoff. Kickoffs start the periods in extra time.
No comments:
Post a Comment