Give Me Just A Little More Time

It was recently reported that FIFA president Sepp Blatter, in his own unwavering brand of wisdom, would like to do away with the concept of extra time when it comes to deciding deadlocked World Cup ties. His logic, such as it is, appears to be shaped (or at least heavily influenced) by the volume of grumbles across the footballing community bemoaning the supposed lack of entertainment served up at this summer’s finals in South Africa. Blatter’s proposed solution to this perceived dearth of thrills and spills is a simply constructed one. Observe:

1) Game of football in its constituent parts (i.e. twenty two men kicking a ball at a hole for a set period of time) was boring.

2) If said boring game failed to produce a winner, then surely another half an hour of ball-at-hole-kicking would only add to the tedium?

3) Penalty shoot-outs, however, produce the kind of drama that makes Casino look like an episode of Doctors.

Conclusion) Get straight down to the twelve-yard fun as soon as possible.

While this kind of linear thinking does lie rather snugly alongside today’s lust for instant gratification, it’s hard to shake the feeling that what Mr Blatter is really doing is pandering to some intangible notion of ‘improvement’; or, perhaps more accurately, improvement for improvement’s sake. Canny operator that he is, Mr Blatter is acutely aware that such a move is a vote-puller, certainly for those amongst the game’s governing bodies more concerned with pushing personal agendas than defending its integrity.

Indeed, every so often an idea is floated which claims to offer football a more exciting future, one which more-often-than-not tries to move the goalposts (sometimes literally) in a half-baked attempt to appease onlookers wishing for FIFA to, you know, do something. In this particular instance, I don’t think it needs me to spell out the problems inherent with scrapping extra time. But I’m going to do it anyway.

Firstly, the penalty shoot-out, if it does indeed occur, should ideally be viewed as the ultimate bittersweet payoff, the conclusion to the drama series where the leading character – the match itself; the heart and soul of the matter – is killed off, but in a gripping, nail-biter of a finale. Perhaps they drown while attempting to save a beloved god-son from an eel, or accidentally electrocute themselves on some faulty wiring shortly after defusing a warhead. In short, it’s not the way we’d want things to end, but the seductive adrenalin rush involved means we’ll take it.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, Blatter’s vision seems to push directly against the entire concept of the ‘football match’ itself. The golden and (briefly) silver goal ideas were scrapped after all evidence suggested their use made teams even more wracked with nerves than during the preceding hour and a half. Entire teams became jabbering, fearful wrecks, petrified that one sloppy backpass or scuffed clearance would crush the collective dreams of their nation in a heartbeat. These periods of added time morphed into grotesque festivals of long-clearances and negative substitutions. But at least our heroes had a go during the regulation ninety. Remove the buffer between the match proper and the Russian roulette of penalties, and you risk turning the entire event into a George Graham wet dream. And no-one wants to see that.

Worryingly, should Blatter get his wish, extra time as an entity in itself may become a thing of the past, relegated to the same archive of footballing history as endless cup replays and mullets. This would of course be a tragedy, for extra time has lavished us with some truly cherished memories. Take the 1999 FA Cup semi-final replay at Villa Park, remembered for Ryan Giggs’ mazy dribble, finish and subsequent chest-baring. Or the agony of agonies that was Paul Gascoigne’s slide-n-miss against Germany in ’96. Or how about the countless Playoff finals taken to extra time during our formative football-watching years, etching names like Clive Mendonca and Fabian de Freitas into our grey matter?

Sure, for the supporter of the defeated they pain like hell to remember but, for better or worse, remember them we do. These are bittersweet moments forever tattooed to our synapses, inked alongside that week our lottery numbers came up but we didn’t buy a ticket, or the girl we should have kissed at that party but didn’t and is now married to that fella who works in Subway. They are the ones that got away; the almost-weres and the could-have-beens, and together they represent an aching yet cherished part of the collective footballing memory. They hurt, but they’re ours.

~ Matt