Stopping the clock when play stops would make the game fairer, eliminate time-wasting, and improve the spectacle without changing soccer’s essence.
By Jack Angelides and Dan Perry
Millions of Americans are discovering soccer during this World Cup — and many ask the same question: Why doesn’t anyone know exactly how much time is left? They deserve an answer.
Unlike most major sports, soccer allows the clock to keep running during injuries, substitutions and video reviews, asking referees to estimate how much time should be added. This encourages time-wasting gambits, like ridiculous theatrics feigning injuries. It frustrates fans and is easy to fix.
Raised on the NFL, NBA and NHL — where championships can turn on a split second — Americans might wonder why the world’s most popular sport, sophisticated in many respects, remains stubbornly imprecise about time. Our prediction is that despite hosting the World Cup, they will not embrace the game as others have without time management reform.
The this bigger even than the sport – however some may resist that such a thing is possible. Modern civilization rests on one of humanity’s greatest achievements: precise, shared time. From Greenwich Mean Time to the atomic clocks that synchronize GPS, aviation and global finance, accuracy is the foundation of modern life. And competitive sport, no less than modern society, depends on knowing exactly how much time remains. Every strategic decision, in fact, depends upon it. Teams protect a lead differently with two minutes remaining than they do with twenty. Spectators experience the closing moments differently when they know exactly how much time is left.
In the NBA, some games are decided by shots released with a tenth of a second remaining. Hockey stops the clock whenever play stops, creating riveting finishes. In NFL football, a team can come back from five points behind on a single play beginning with the clock stopped at one second left. Baseball, which has no clock at all, is a different story – and it has paid a price.
Soccer, meanwhile, does have a clock, yet still treats time as approximate.
Play stops for injuries. Play stops for substitutions. Play stops for VAR reviews of offside plays. Goalkeepers hold the ball. Players linger over throw-ins and goal kicks. Medical staffs stroll onto the field. Yet the clock keeps running.
The estimate of compensating “added time” is inevitably imperfect – and almost aggressively imprecise. Near the end of each half, an official displays the added time, but it’s a rounded estimate. Only the referee knows the official time, and even then its application is flexible. If a dangerous attack is underway, play routinely continues beyond the announced time. No players, coaches or fans know precisely when the match will end.
The result is a timing system unlike almost any other in professional sport: one in which the official time is hidden, the publicly announced time is only an estimate, and the actual endpoint is determined by custom and discretion rather than by the clock itself.
All of this nonsense rewards precisely the behavior fans dislike most.
A team protecting a late lead has every incentive to consume seconds whenever possible. Players writhe in pretend agony, goalkeepers suddenly become meticulous about where they place the ball, and when tension should be at its highest, the outcome often depends on who can manipulate an invisible clock more effectively.
The solution is simple: Stop the clock whenever play stops.
Continuous time once reflected the practical difficulty of stopping stadium clocks. In the digital age, that rationale has disappeared. If a player is injured, if VAR requires a review, during substitutions, if there is some confrontation or interruption, stop the clock.
The benefits would extend well beyond accurate timekeeping.
Fake injuries and time-wasting substitutions would lose much of their tactical value. VAR reviews would no longer consume playing time, and players would spend more time playing rather than manipulating the clock.
While reformers are at it, they might also address another needless irritation: Throw-ins are routinely taken several meters from where the ball actually left the field, often with little objection from officials. More pointless imprecision.
None of these reforms would alter soccer’s character. They would simply enforce its rules more honestly.
Soccer has never been afraid of modernization when it genuinely improved the game. Goal-line technology settled disputes over whether the ball crossed the line – and that’s a great thing that eliminates unfairness. VAR, however imperfectly implemented, reflected a willingness to use technology in pursuit of greater fairness. Better timekeeping belongs in the same category.
The beauty of soccer has never depended on uncertainty about the clock. It lies in the movement, the improvisation, the tactics and the extraordinary moments that can emerge from almost nothing. None of that would change. The purpose of rules is not to preserve old habits simply because they are old. It is to produce the best possible version of the sport.
Refusing an obvious improvement out of misguided devotion to tradition has a name in soccer. It’s called an own goal.
Jack Angelides is a Cypriot soccer executive who is the CEO of Maccabi Tel Aviv, which has won 26 Israeli championships and 25 State Cups (including 2026), and has competed in the Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League; the views expressed are his own.
