So Uefa is considering doing away with extra time, at least in the knockout stage of the Champions League, another grand old tradition swept away as the arc of history bends towards the generation of revenue for the already wealthy. This is the way of the world and so it is the way of football, all that is great and glorious about the game desecrated to produce more content to be sold.
But first, a caveat, an increasingly necessary one as middle age hurtles by. Is this about age? Are our responses to extra time conditioned by our formative years? My first FA Cup final was 1982, a drab game enlivened by Glenn Hoddle putting Tottenham ahead after 110 minutes and Terry Fenwick heading an equaliser five minutes later (Spurs then won the replay). The Schumacher-Battiston World Cup semi-final in Seville came six weeks later: at 90 minutes it was 1-1, by the 98th minute it was 3-1 to France and by the end it was 3-3 and West Germany had won on penalties. The following yearâs FA Cup final also went to extra time as Manchester United drew with Brighton; although there were no goals in the added 30 minutes, there was the drama of Gordon Smithâs late miss.
By the age of six, I was fully convinced extra time meant excitement and that it was a good thing, a view that has barely been challenged by the fact that five of the Africa Cup of Nations finals Iâve attended have finished 0-0 before being decided on penalties. Maybe this is just another example of football acting as a great nostalgic comfort blanket and everybody instinctively resisting any deviation from the game with which we fell in love.
But what is the justification for scrapping it? That players are playing too much? How many periods of extra time do sides play over a season? Over the past two seasons, just one Champions League knockout tie has gone to extra time. Thatâs not why fatigue is such an issue. Players are playing too much because footballâs authorities keep making tournaments bigger and inventing new ones. You want to spare playersâ legs? Maybe donât add two extra group games and a possible knockout round â the equivalent of 12 periods of extra time â to the Champions League. Maybe donât create a Club World Cup, the winners of which would play the equivalent of 21 periods of extra time, plus any actual extra time.
Is it so that everybody has a clearer time of when games end? Are we to believe that Uefa, the body that presided over the chaos of the Champions League finals of Paris and Istanbul and the Deutsche Bahn-fuelled farrago of Euro 2024, suddenly cares about fans?
Is it to make scheduling easier for television companies? Thatâs possibly true, but it seems less of a concern when the video assistant referee is taking 10 minutes to determine when a ball has brushed an arm.
And anyway, if this is television dictating such issues, itâs a clear case of placing the cart before the horse. Is it really a radical proposition to suggest the sport must always come first? The thought occurred after Tottenhamâs victory over Tamworth in the third round of the FA Cup when some argued that not only had the abolition of replays denied the fifth-tier side a money-spinning replay, but their chances of pulling off a shock were significantly reduced by the tie going to extra time. On the one hand, that is true: a Premier League side will outlast a team of part-timers. But on the other, for the game to have gone straight to penalties would have felt gimmicky.
No football, not even the third round of the FA Cup, should simply be about the generation of shocks. If that were the case, you may as well randomly select two games a round to be decided by the toss of a coin. Shocks are not good in and of themselves but because of what they say about the strength of the pyramid, and because of the real beauty of football, which is that diligence, application and organisation (and fortune), gives even much weaker sides a chance of eliminating a stronger side. Shocks must be earned, even if that just means the weaker team packing their box with 11 players and hurling bodies in the way of the ball.
Nobody now can seriously believe that penalty shootouts are lotteries but, equally, they test one component of the sport. Penalties are a part of football but they are not football. They may be the least bad way football has found to settle drawn games, but they should be a last resort. Inevitably, the abolition of extra time means more games will be settled on penalties. Is that really what we want, more football settled by something that is less than football?
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Is the worry that extra time is often boring? Sometimes it is â although that could be alleviated if referees were stronger on time-wasting than, say, Daniele Orsato was in Real Madridâs win over Manchester City in the 2022 Champions League semi-final. Even then, though, it was in extra time that Karim Benzema struck the winner. Or take the 2022 World Cup final: would that have somehow been enhanced without extra time, without Lionel Messiâs second goal, without Kylian Mbappéâs third, without Emi MartÃnezâs last-gasp save from Randal Kolo Muani?
Not for the first time, thereâs the sense of a sports administrator not trusting its own product: make it shorter, add lights and fireworks and music at every opportunity, chuck in gimmicks. People watch football because they like football, and if they donât like football, why are you trying to make them watch it? Itâs not medicine for a child, to be forced down with a dollop of sugar and strawberry flavouring.
Thereâs no footballing argument for doing away with extra time. This is not nostalgia talking. Shorter does not necessarily equal better. Like so much else, this feels like cosmetic change under consideration because of a refusal to address the biggest issue, which is the vast disparities in wealth and revenue distribution. Perhaps it is a conservative position, but it really shouldnât be seen as reactionary to believe that when addressing the future of football, the most important consideration should be football itself.
