FORMER Arsenal chairman David Dein has called for football games to be reduced to just 60 minutes rather than the traditional 90.
Dein, who was the Gunners vice-chairman from 1983-2007, has backed the idea of adding a stop-clock to the sport in order to allow more football to be played.
The average time the ball is in play in the Premier League is around 55 minutes and under Dein’s proposition the clock would stop every time the ball went dead, meaning 60 minutes of football per game.
The former Arsenal co-owner spoke to TalkSport about his proposal.
He said: “I’ve fought all my life in football for accuracy and integrity, the one thing that is lacking at the present moment when we are talking about accuracy is time keeping.
“Whereas we brought it into other parts of the game, you may remember we started years ago with the ten yard spray and everyone was worrying whether that would work and it did cut out an element of cheating in the game.
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“We then went to goal line technology and everyone thought it would only be used once or twice.
“You saw it working the other day in Brentford vs Liverpool when Wissa scored a goal – it was goal line technology that captured that.
“VAR now giving more accuracy in the game. The one area that is still lacking is the attention to time keeping.”
The Qatar World Cup saw an unprecedented amount of additional time being added on the end of each half as Fifa attempted to cut out time wasting.
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Dein’s proposal would see the end of added time and ensure that a full 60 minutes of football is played in each game.
Time wasting has become a growing issue within football and the shortened halves could help put a stop to it.
Mikel Arteta was aggrieved with the officials during his side’s goalless draw with Newcastle on Tuesday in which he felt time wasting was ongoing alongside other poor decisions.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
