A crackdown on time-wasting and dissent as well as a much stricter policing of the bench and technical areas are at the heart of new refereeing guidelines that will be in force for the start of the football season.
From the first Championship game on Friday – which sees Sheffield Wednesday take on Southampton live on Sky Sports – added minutes at the end of EFL and Premier League matches are now expected to frequently run into double digits, as they did at the last World Cup in Qatar.
One match official has told Sky Sports News it will now be a rarity if a top flight game lasts less than 100 minutes.
More accurate game time
During the World Cup long periods of stoppage time were added to games – and we can expect the same in domestic football this season
Officials have become increasingly concerned with statistics that show how little the ball has been in play in professional matches in England, with averages last season of just 48 minutes in League Two, 50 minutes in League One, 52 minutes in the Championship and just under 55 minutes in the Premier League.
More time will be added on too for goal celebrations, which officials feel have become lengthier and more elaborate.
Referees will now be obliged to specifically time how long the game is stopped before the re-start for game interruptions, such as a goal, a substitution, injury, or preparations for a free-kick.
In further attempts to speed up play, the EFL will now have the multi-ball system for all matches, as is already the case in the Premier League.
Elsewhere, referees will be tasked with being more robust in penalising “clear and impactful actions” that waste time – those that differ from the obvious act of kicking the ball away.
EFL and Premier League football will now bear much more resemblance to the Qatar World Cup, where England vs Iran had 24 minutes of added time and the game lasted a total of 117 minutes. There were, however, two concussion-related injuries, eight goals and 10 substitutions in the 90 minutes.
New measures introduced to help improve behaviour of players, managers and coaches as well as addressing the issue of football tragedy abuse
- A new technical area code
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