00:00Did you know that FIFA tried to introduce four quarters of football instead of two halves?
00:04Well, they did, and it wasn't even recently. Back in 1990, before trying to disguise advertisement
00:09breaks as hydration breaks, FIFA president Zhao Havelang actually suggested splitting our beloved
00:1590-minute football match into four quarters of 25. The reason? Because the US held the rights
00:21to the upcoming 1994 World Cup and TV companies were worried that two 45-minute halves wouldn't
00:26leave enough time to give us the adverts we so desperately wanted to see whilst making a
00:31load of money off of them. Thankfully, and I can't actually believe I'm saying this, but UEFA stepped
00:36in and completely vetoed the idea. But it wasn't the only radical rule that was proposed, and some
00:40actually made it through that have, well, helped the game. The 1994 World Cup saw goalkeepers no
00:46longer allowed to pick up a back pass, which avoided huge amounts of time wasting that had
00:50made previous tournaments so tedious. And also three points were introduced for a group stage win
00:55instead of two, meaning that teams had to go for the win rather than take a nil or draw,
00:59knowing that a two-point gap was more easily closed in future games. The result? A thoroughly
01:04entertaining tournament compared to many of its predecessors, especially the defensive-minded
01:09Italian 90.
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