Goal Line Technology and VAR have both been introduce in recent years to the game of football. Goal line technology has come in extremely smoothly and takes all but a second to give the referee an outcome. VAR sigh VAR on the other hand has caused a major change in the game in terms of result, flow and time. In some instances, the whole process to go stop the game, get checked, tell the ref to look at it, he checks it and then ultimately decides on what course of action to take. If that action is a penalty, then you have to add the time to set up and take the penalty into the equation as well. This process can take up to 5 minutes sometimes longer to fully complete. This has had a massive effect on added times. We are now regularly seeing added times exceeding the 5-minute mark as a result. If they are going to be so concerned with the correct decision being made, they should be more concerned with the correct time being shown as well.

It is no secret that added time is inaccurate at the best of times. However, until I googled it, I never realised just how inaccurate it really was. According to one study of the 2018 World Cup the expected added time was around double the actual added time given. There was 1 game where the difference between expected and actual added time exceeded 13 minutes. 13 minutes

!!! Players have scored hattricks in under 3!!! Now in fairness that game did finish 5 – 2 to Belgium so there was a lot of action, lots of goals and lots of stoppages.

However, what if it was your team in a big final or big game and you found out that there was still supposed to be an extra 5 – 10 mins left for your team to win or draw. But because the time wasn’t kept properly, they lost. I know I would feel hard done by.

Just for anyone elses own interest this is the site where I found the study

These are of course just my opinions and my thoughts that I have had about football Let me know what you think by commenting or mesaging me one way or another.