Howard Webb stance on 100-minute games – says players ‘brought it on themselves’

Scrutiny around the new injury-time laws introduced to English football won't lead to reform after Howard Webb said the changes have been made because of players promoting time-wasting tactics.

Many fans are in favour of the new rules, which were first used at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and regularly saw matches pass the 100-minute mark. Referees accounted for a nominal amount of injury time added onto games in the past, but the EFL and Premier League will now enforce the exact amount of time used up by celebrations, substitutions and other events.

It's led to concern among some players, with Manchester United defender Raphael Varane using the changes to reiterate his view that players are already tasked with too much football. But such pleas have fallen on deaf ears as far as Webb, technical director of Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL), is concerned.

“We will stick to this,” proclaimed the former Premier League overseer during a recent appearance on the BBC Football Daily podcast. “We’re not going to ease off or start to ignore behaviours in October or November. This will be here for good.

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"The only way we can be successful is to be consistent and continue doing this. I am determined this won’t be something you only see during the next few days and weeks. Feel free to quote me on that."

Webb – who was the first person to referee the finals of the World Cup and Champions League in the same year – added he doesn't expect officials 'to be perfect' and account for every second wasted. However, he clarified he does expect consistency after certain events have gone ignored in the past.

Ball-in-play time has become a huge concern for fans, particularly when the rising matchday costs in football have become so untenable for many supporters. But Webb doubled down on his thesis that these changes would not be required were it not for certain time-based tactics becoming commonplace.

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“Yeah – we have seen a trend where effective playing time has come down, year on year, and we've seen time-wasting tactics being employed in certain situations and we're just trying to make the game fairer,” he added. “We're trying to deal with that in a way that gives the game back the playing time that might otherwise have been lost.

“The intention with time-wasting – like subs who walk off to the far side – is to make it a fairer game and we've been mandated by directives from IFAB [the International Football Association Board] to do that and by us being more proactive in doing the job that we are there to do. That’s to penalise unfair and unsporting acts.”

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The average in-play time for League Two last season fell as low as 48 minutes, meaning spectators saw little more than a half of 'effective' football for every game they watched. But standards have slipped across the board, with Premier League teams keeping the ball in play for an average of 54 minutes and 46 seconds last term, the lowest since records began in 2012.

“For too long officials have chosen to turn a blind eye to certain things, maybe thinking it was the best way to deal with it, not make a fuss," he continued. "But we are seeing grassroots officials having a bad experience too often. This has to change in our sport.

“While initially there are some changes in behaviour that will have to be driven through, they will end up with a game that is more enjoyable from their point of view as well."

Initiatives have been introduced over the years to tackle certain controversial aspects of the sport, such as simulation (diving) and dissent towards officials, only for those new 'rules' to be forgotten about after a matter of months. Referees are already showing they mean business under the new format after EFL teams received 26 cards for dissent on the opening weekend of the 2023/24 season – 15 more than the amount dispensed on the final weekend of the previous campaign, per the Daily Express.

There were also 29 yellow cards shown for time wasting across the Championship, League One and League Two curtain-raisers, with Webb commenting he's not surprised after officials were instructed to be stricter in their practice. And it looks as though the 100-minute (or more) matches are here to stay unless players put in the work to discourage waste.

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