half time

YES!!!!!!!

YES!!!

Oh crap - we let that one slip.

This post was edited by maire_cate on Sun, Jun 22, 14 at 19:54

Oh man!!!!

That was painful! The last 10 seconds.! But at least it's a tie for the US, not a loss!

brutal, but we're still in it. Philadelphia sports talk radio is going wild crying "we got robbed!" Those arbitrary extra minutes are strange.

Can someone explain why there were minutes added?

I noticed that when USA played Ghana, and 5 minutes were added.

Don 't understand.

Former adult player and youth coach here, I can explain:

A match is two periods of 45 minutes of play each. The clock runs and doesn't stop. There are no time outs. There are happenings that cause play to be stopped or time to be spent not "playing" - substitutions (limited to 3 per game for each team) play interruptions for injuries, restarts due to fouls, stalling, etc, At the referee's discretion, a few minutes can be added to the end of each period and so usually is. The number of minutes is displayed on a handheld board by a match official standing at the midfield line, at about the end of the running time. It's rarely less than 1 minute or more than 5, usually 2 or 3.

It's not arbitrary, it's normal. For soccer.

Edit to explain timekeeping:

A clock is rarely or never displayed at a stadium - if it is, it's only for reference purposes only. The time is kept by the ref, and it is the ref who determines when a half ends. If the ref decides to add 2 minutes, it could be as little as 1.5 minutes or as many as 3, because if one team starts time wasting during the added time, he just adds on an approximation of what he thinks is needed. A period ends when the ref blows the whistle, only loosely based on the exact time. Again, this differs from American sports with a clock but it is how soccer has always been. It causes no confusion.

This post was edited by snidely on Sun, Jun 22, 14 at 21:02

Thanks for the info.