Analysis of the effect of different game rules on sport-specific parameters in football

The decrease in effective playing time in football is seen as a worrying factor by both football stakeholders and organizations such as IFAB and FIFA. As a result of this situation, the current experimental study has emerged. The aim of the study is to examine the differences in external load, playing time, and football-specific technical performance data after intervention in the playing time rule. The study included 64 licensed football players from the Eskişehir Local League U-18 teams (Mage = 18.19, SD = 0.39; Mheight = 174.97, SD = 8.04; Mweight = 66.05, SD = 8.72; Mbmi = 22.46, SD = 1.07) participated in the study. Participants took part in one match each under two different match rules [90 minutes under standard game rules (S90) and 60 minutes with the clock stopped when play was stopped (S60)]. Throughout the study, players' internal and external load data was recorded using GPS, soccer-specific technical performance data was recorded using cameras, and match duration data was recorded using stopwatches. When the findings of the study were examined, it was observed that S60 had statistically significantly higher effective playing time (p<,001) and effective playing time ratio data (p<0,05). In external load data, statistically significant differences in favor of S60 were observed in total running distance (m), equivalent running distance (m), acceleration per minute (m/s2), deceleration per minute (m/s2), and high-speed running (> 18 km/h) distance (m) while in the maximum speed (m/s) and sprint (> 23 km/h) distance (m) data, a significant difference was found in favor of S90. In football-specific technical performance data, statistically significant differences were observed in favor of S60 in terms of goal numbers, assist numbers, shot numbers and goal position numbers, and in favor of S90 in terms of pass accuracy rate.