“Karma at its finest.”
You have heard of ‘Fergie Time’, well now it’s ‘Klopp time,’ as Liverpool were awarded almost three additional minutes over injury time last night, which gave them time to steal a winner against Newcastle.
Five minutes were originally shown on the board, but Fábio Carvalho’s late strike hit the back of the net at 97:13 minutes, leaving Newcastle, and neutral fans, enraged.
With the game at 1-1, it seemed like Jurgen Klopp was going to have to settle for a draw, but the full time whistle never came, and eventually the Reds were awarded a corner that was swung into the far post, causing chaos in the box, before finally finding its way into the goal.
The Liverpool bench celebrated passionately in front of the Newcastle staff, who were jumping up and down in fury, devestated to get nothing from the game.
How this time was added however, was explained by a Liverpool fan on Twitter, who did the math to work out exactly where the extra minutes came from.
Throughout the last ten minutes or so, Klopp was visibly irritated at the opposition’s attempts to slow the game down by taking an age with the kick outs, throwing the ball out of play, go down with cramp at every opportunity, and get the physios onto the pitch for as long as possible.
At 92:30, Nick Pope faked an injury and it took 94 seconds for play to restart.
At 96:34, EXACTLY 94 seconds after the 5 min added time, Liverpool won a corner which won them the game.
Karma at its finest. pic.twitter.com/0KsCErONIK
— SH (@SenneH1990) September 1, 2022
The referee appeared to be clocking up all of this time however, and added it onto the end, as calculated by this Twitter user who explains how.
“At 92:30, Nick Pope faked an injury and it took 94 seconds for play to restart. At 96:34, EXACTLY 94 seconds after the 5 min added time, Liverpool won a corner which won them the game.
“Karma at its finest.”
Like everything on social media, this tweet wasn’t exactly met with open arms and many disputed it in the mentions, but the real call for arms is that officials should be allowed to stop the clock.
Many other sports simply pause the time when a player is injured, being treated or substituted, and then resume when the game continues.
The technology is no more advanced than a simple stop-watch and would put an end to these actions trying to run the clock down.
