When a new league season is around the corner, fans will often be on high alert for any exciting content to whet their appetite ahead of the upcoming campaign.
The release of the new league fixtures, the first pre-season photos on the club website, and the… International Football Association Board law changes?
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Wait, don’t start yawning just yet.
Allow The Athletic to cut through the less thrilling updates and pick out one particular law change that caught the eye: “Law 7 – The Duration of the Match. ‘Goal celebrations’ to become a separate bullet point in the list of causes of time lost for which the referee makes allowance”.
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Put simply, referees will now be encouraged to add additional time to each half to account for extended goal celebrations eating into the action.
Time-wasting was a wider ongoing theme throughout last season, with a sizeable difference in the average share of match action between Manchester City (60 minutes, 32 seconds) and Newcastle United (51 minutes, 14 seconds), at respective ends of the scale.
In 2022-23, the average share of total minutes that the ball was in play was just 55.7 per cent of the time — the lowest it has been for the past decade in the Premier League. Consequently, measures are understandably being taken to ensure that fans are getting value for money.
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Of course, stoppages of play can be for many reasons within a game — VAR decisions, player injuries, and the distribution of yellow or red cards are not always in the control of either team, but some factors are.
The delays before a goal kick, throw-in or free-kick can be frustratingly long from some sides, and we’ve all seen the classic “jog-walk” that substituted players will often perform when their team is ahead — eating up a few more valuable seconds.
Rarely do we take note of the time taken to celebrate after scoring a goal, but should we?
This calls for a closer look.
“Do the macarena with a nice little salute at the end.”
It was a challenge set by Michail Antonio to Callum Wilson to try a new goal celebration on an episode of The Footballer’s Football Podcast. After Wilson scored against Antonio’s West Ham in April, he duly accepted — running behind the goal to perform the Spanish pop dance before being mobbed by his team-mates.
A chance to enjoy the moment, engage with the fans, and take a minute to regroup, but there were plenty of memorable celebrations last season — whether it was Bukayo Saka’s run to the corner flag…
….Marcus Rashford’s “mentality” celebration…
….or the outright ridiculous Robbie Keane impression from Leeds United’s Luke Ayling after his goal against Wolves.
It should rightfully be a joyous moment for players and fans — but just how much game time are these celebrations eating up?
On average, it took 75.9 seconds between a goal being scored and the subsequent kick-off in the Premier League last season, although some spent more time getting back to their own half than others.
Crystal Palace fans had the longest wait to restart play after their team had scored, with an average of 85 seconds until the opposition kicked off after the ball had hit the back of the net.
Meanwhile, Newcastle pushed back against their reputation of being a time-wasting team, with Eddie Howe’s men actually taking the least time to celebrate last season — an average of just 66.6 seconds between their goal scored and the subsequent opponent kick-off.
It is a title that the club’s Twitter account was quick to push back on, including a cheeky tweet after Newcastle’s 2-0 victory over Manchester United.
No time-wasting required… 😏
— Newcastle United FC (@NUFC) April 2, 2023
Elsewhere, Manchester City were among the quickest teams to get back into shape after scoring — with just under 68 seconds of celebration time.
However, despite City having the highest share of ball-in-play time last season, the sheer volume of goals that they scored — 2.5 per game — meant that Pep Guardiola’s men averaged nearly three minutes from celebrating alone in every match they played.
Aggregated across a whole season, this time adds up. A total of 105 minutes and 45 seconds was spent restarting the play after City’s 94 goals scored. That is more than a single game’s worth of time, albeit less than Arsenal’s total of nearly two hours.
An alternative view is that it is not the celebrating team who is taking their time after a goal is scored, but rather the conceding team who might be dragging their heels to restart the game.
Think about it. It is not uncommon to see team-mates hold a short post-mortem after conceding, with an opportunity to come together, re-organise and calm things down after the opponent’s tails are up.
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In this regard, West Ham took the longest to restart after conceding, with an average of 90 seconds taken before kicking off. Meanwhile, Brentford and Newcastle — famed for their delays last season — stay among the top, unwilling to be rushed into action and electing a more considered approach when restarting the game.
At the other end, Southampton were the quickest to restart play in their relegation season — growing so accustomed to conceding that they had mastered the skill of digging the ball out from the goalmouth and returning it back to the halfway line more swiftly than any other side.
Meanwhile, Manchester City and an underperforming Liverpool were similarly quick to restart, shocked by the concession of a goal and eager to get the game back up, as if to utter “how dare you” to their opponent.
Whatever the cause of such delays, there is a wider, more serious point about the time elapsed during goal celebrations and how much it is accounted for in the referee’s stoppage time.
World referees’ chief Pierluigi Collina highlighted Liverpool’s 7-0 thrashing of Manchester United as a pertinent example of this.
“In the game at Liverpool, there were four minutes added (in total), one in the first half and three in the second. But there were six goals in the second half,” said Collina.
With a league average of 76 seconds of celebrations per goal, the additional time from this delay should have been closer to nine minutes at Anfield.
“I can understand that showing the right amount of time when it is 7-0 is difficult to understand. But in some competitions, the goal difference in the entire competition may be decisive at the end for the ranking. So, even one goal scored or not scored could make the difference.”
Goal difference has been the deciding factor for the Premier League as recently as 2011-12, with that Aguero goal meaning Manchester City’s 89-point tally edged Manchester United with a goal difference of 64 to 56.
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Going back further, Arsenal clinched the First Division title from Liverpool in 1989 based on goals scored, after the pair had identical goal difference.
The margins are tight — particularly at the top — and more accurate game time is likely to mean more action, more entertainment, but ultimately more equity for all teams.
Fans have grown accustomed to longer stoppage time during this summer’s Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, after positive reviews following similar actions being taken in the men’s World Cup in Qatar in December.
With less than an hour of ball-in-play action on average last year, expect to see more football played for the upcoming season — something we can all celebrate.
(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)
