Will the Premier League football games be shortened?

There are more and more unusual suggestions in the discussion about an early continuation of the football season in the English Premier League.

Player union leader PFA, Gordon Taylor, said there was also talk of shortening the game time. “We know what suggestions have been made (so far),” said Taylor in an interview with BBC Radio 4, “the opportunity to switch more often so that the halves don’t last the full 45 minutes, neutral venues – there are many ideas.”

However, Taylor was unable to say how realistic the proposal for shorter halves actually is. “We cannot predict the future,” he said. “Let’s wait and see what suggestions there are, then we let the managers, coaches and players process all of this and get a well-founded picture.”

Such a temporary change in the football fundamentals would be a matter for the rule-keepers of the International Football Association Board Ifab. Most recently, the international association at the Ifab made the proposal to temporarily allow up to five instead of three substitutions per team due to the coronavirus crisis.

Last Friday, all 20 Premier League clubs had voted to end the season that had been interrupted since mid-March. There is speculation that the government and health experts will agree to start again in mid-June. On Friday, the clubs want to exchange views in a video conference.

It wasn’t until the beginning of April that a strange idea made headlines: A club is said to have proposed to host the rest of the Premier League season in China – which for good reasons is considered very unlikely. The idea of ​​playing the remaining games in a neutral location was more popular: these two stadiums are under discussion.