We see a couple of new things in this world cup, including new rules, new methodologies, and new technologies. I’ll go through those I’ve noticed.

More Accurate Injury Time

What is wasted, goes to the injury time. This effectively elimitates the incentive of time wasting.

It has been talked about for years, but football really should be like 30 min. per half and stop the watch when the ball isn’t being played.

More Strategic Substitution Rule

There are more substitutes allowed, but a team can only call for substitution 3 times, not counting half time.

Instant and Accurate Offside Tech

No more wrongful offside decisions or correct but prolonged VAR offside deciding process. When you get the ball in an offside position, the tech calls you out, and there’s not debate. It even offers a nice 3D model to show how you’re offside.

Finer-Grained Possession Stat

Possession percentage has always been shared with the 2 teams, for example, Spain gets 95% while the opponent gets 5% of the possession (with the match ending in 0-3). However, in this world cup, we see the “in contest” percentage in the possession stat.

Tbh I have no idea how the stats are calculated. Does Opta has a million of Pakistan slaves to watch every game and record every player’s touches,, passes, and movement? But it makes sense to include a “in contest” possession regardless, as there are indeed a lot of time when the ball is no belonged to either side, e.g. when a defender clears the ball.

There are a lot of ambiguities involved however. When a player plays a long pass with the ball ending up in their teammates’s feet, sure, the flying time is included in their possession time, but what if the ball ends up in the opponent’s feet? It should be counted as “in contest” right? So you need a sliding window so that you can cache all of the undetermined actions? How does that work?