The Premier League champion manager of Leicester City is not a fan of the lengthy periods of stoppage time that have been a feature of the World Cup in Qatar.
Leicester City’s title-winning manager Claudio Ranieri believes 30-minute halves provide a better solution to football’s lost minutes than exceedingly long periods of stoppage time.
Hundred-minute matches have been a theme of the World Cup in Qatar with Fifa referees chief Pierluigi Collina instructing officials to keep track of stoppages. But Ranieri’s not a fan.
Instead, he believes matches should be 30 minutes each way, with the game played to a stop-clock, with time pausing when the ball is dead. Earlier in the tournament, stats gurus Opta calculated that the average active playing time for World Cup matches stood at 55 minutes.
Speaking to Calcio Mercato about the length of added time in Qatar, Ranieri said: “I don’t agree with this, because you never know how long a half will really last. I have a different way of ensuring all matches last the same amount of time and that is to calculate 30 minutes of active football per half. That seems the best solution to me.
“I hope someone can wake up and introduce the active playing time rule. We are seeing very long stoppages and I think this is the first step towards a solution, but it’s not enough.”
However, Ranieri does not believe it will solve the issue of time-wasting though. That’s because ticking down the clock is not the sole reason for delaying a game.
He added: “I doubt it because it’s not just about wasting time. It’s about breaking up the rhythm of the opposition team and that is still important.”
Ranieri, now 71, is currently without a club. His last stint as a manager was his three-month spell with Watford in the Premier League that ended in January this year.
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