Time-wasters are to be targeted by FIFA in a series of trials aimed at speeding up the game amid increasing concern over the amount of time the ball is in play in football.
The International Football Association Board has also agreed to bring forwards other measures too, designed to quicken the pace of the game, including semi-automated offsides, which should reduce delays currently associated with VAR.
And IFAB said it would test the use of kick-ins instead of throw ins, an idea first proposed by former Arsenal manager, Arsene Wenger.
Last season, effective playing time dropped to its lowest level in the Premier League since the 2010-11 season, with just 55 minutes and seven seconds of action, on average.
At one stage in the autumn, the ball in play figure for the top flight fell to its lowest ever level.
The situation is even worse in the lower leagues. The ball in play figure in League Two plummeted to 49 minutes and 45 seconds, last season.
Goal kicks, corners, throw-ins, free-kicks, additional substitutions and the use of VAR are all contributing to a fall in playing time.
And seconds have been eroded from the game at a time when ticket prices are more expensive than ever and there are extreme variations from one club to another, as well as between leagues.
Now, the game’s law makers have had enough and plan to take action by testing different solutions.
‘Trials the IFAB board are going to look into are linked with the time, waste of time, but also effective time, how to find a solution in this respect,’ the president of FIFA Gianni Infantino told the 136th Annual General Meeting of the International Football Advisory Board.
‘We all believe and have the same feeling that is not really acceptable that if we say that a game of football is a game of 90 minutes, but in reality, only 46, 47 or 48 minutes are played, we need to look into that,’
‘There are ways with the time keeping, of granting additional time… but some trials will be made in this respect to calculate the playing time in a fairer way.’
One controversial proposal put forward by the International Football Association Board in 2017 was to time matches to 30 minutes each way, with a strict countdown clock, which would be paused for each stoppage, however minor. A similar method is employed in basketball.
While at face value it feels as though fans would be deprived of game-time, in fact almost all supporters would see more action. Manchester City are the only Premier League sides to average more than an hour of ball in play.
In October, Manchester City beat Burnley 2-0 in the Premier League at the Etihad and the ball was in play for 65 minutes and 42 seconds, which was almost 13 minutes more than the Clarets average.
The worst offenders in the Premier League are Aston Villa, whose fans saw 52 minutes and 45 seconds of meaningful action, on average, last season.
Meanwhile, West Ham's 2-1 home defeat to Brentford this season, saw the lowest effective playing time in the top flight. It fell to just 41 minutes and 33 seconds.
And supporters down the road at Leyton Orient fared even worse when Barrow made the long trip south. They saw the ball in play for only 36 minutes and 28 seconds, in a match that ended 2-0 to the home side.
So, the countdown clock now appears to be back on the agenda with one of the trials looking at measuring the actual time the ball is in play and adjusting the length of the game accordingly. This would potentially remove the incentive to waste time.
‘In terms of letting the actual time when the ball is played be recorded is one of the programme trials being looked at,’ said Mark Bullingham, the chief executive of the English FA, who is a member of IFAB.
‘We all discussed in the room that time keeping in football is an area where the game could get even better and we have seen games where there has been time wasting so that is being looked at where the actual time in play will be recorded and used to determine the length of the game.'
FIFA has not listed the different trials it plans to undertake, but it is clearly committed to taking action.
'We want to find the best way to play more,' said Pierluigi Collina, the chairman of the FIFA referees' committee.
Meanwhile, a separate study has been conducted into reducing the delays around checking offside decisions using VAR.
A semi-automated offside system, using 12 cameras, which generate eight million data points throughout a match, has been trialled at the Club World Cup and Arab Cup and following evaluation it could be introduced at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar this winter.
FIFA is looking at visual aids to help fans in the stadium and at home understand what is happening.
Collina told reporters it would work in a similar way to goal line technology, which automatically generates a 3D image.
'The [offside] line is not defined by the the video assistant referee,' Collina said following teh IFAB meeting. 'It is defined by the technology based in the data received.
'The VAR checks there is correspondence between what is seen and the calculation of th technology.'
In other developments, IFAB agreed to increase the number of substitutes allowed on the bench to 15, plus the 11 players on the pitch, taking the potential matchday squad to 26. Individual competitions must choose whether to adopt the new measure.
In addition, the temporary increase in substitutions to five, implemented during Covid, has been made permanent.
And IFAB said it would allow the trial of body cams for officials in a bid to tackle violence against referees, particularly in the grassroots game.