17 February 2023 , 06:00
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Former Premier League referee Mark Clattenburg has called on football to introduce a time limit at set-pieces to curb time wasting.
It is one of two changes to the game’s laws that Clattenburg, who recently quit his role as referees’ chief in Egypt, would like to see introduced. The other is to give officials the powers to reverse decisions, such as turning a goal kick into a corner, if players purposely waste time.
Clattenburg, who took charge of the Euro 2016 final and the Champions League final in the same year, was a Premier League referee for over 13 years and admits he gets irritated when he sees side’s purposely time-waste. And he believes that the two changes would quickly curb time-wasting.
Speaking on the ‘No Tippy Tippy Football’ podcast, presented by William Hill and Footy Accumulators’, Clattenburg was asked about specific changes he believes would make the game better.
He said: “I’ve got two. One thing that irritates me is players delaying throw-ins. Players used to deliberately do it, they’d walk up the touchline and then you’d peep them back and the player would be laughing because they know they’ve wasted more time.
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“I think if you don’t take the throw-in quick enough or you take it from the wrong position, it should go the other way.
“The other one is the goal kick and corner situation. Late in the game, for me, it’s time wasting when players are going over to the corner and strolling across, they should have a time limit. A bit like the six second rule with the goalkeeper, you never apply it, but you play it within the parameters.
Mark Clattenburg during his time as a Premier League referee (Getty)“Also goal kicks, I remember Ben Foster, for example, was a nightmare at West Brom because you were sleeping half of the time before he took a goal kick.
"You’d warn him and warn him and late in the game he would take a yellow card which would absorb a bit more time, and he won because he’d got what he wanted, which was to waste more time.
“If you said it could be reversed to a corner, you could ensure the goalkeeper kicked it a bit quicker. I’m not saying we would use it, but it gives power to the referee to stop the goalkeeper from delaying time.”