Champions League Mythbusters: The 5 Minute Rule

There’s an old chest­nut that bas­ket­ball fans endure stat­ing that you only need to watch the last 2 minute of a game. The rest of the game is mean­ing­less since the result will be decided in the last two any­way. Don’t look now, but some­thing very sim­i­lar could be said for many foot­ball matches because of the 5-minute rule.

To the unini­ti­ated, the 5-minute rule is a mantra coaches have been incul­cat­ing their play­ers with for gen­er­a­tions. Sim­ply stated, a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of goals are scored at three piv­otal times in a game: 5 min­utes into a half, 5 min­utes left in a half, and 5 min­utes after a goal has been scored. This mantra pays cre­dence to the men­tal aspect of the game, and how a frame of mind can deter­mine the suc­cess of a club.

With all the hours of men­tal train­ing and sport psy­chol­ogy top flight foot­ballers go through, surely this doesn’t hap­pen at pro­fes­sional level. And most assuredly, the cream of football’s crop, the Cham­pi­ons League sides, would be the ones who would be more dis­ci­plined than to suc­cumb to some­thing labeled by its detrac­tors as an “old wives’ tale”. Right?

Wrong.

As it turns out, the Cham­pi­ons league offers sig­nif­i­cant evi­dence to sup­port the the­ory that plenty of goals are scored at the afore­men­tioned key stages of a match. I’ve done the math on this year’s Cham­pi­ons League group stage and came up with some inter­est­ing num­bers. But first, an expla­na­tion of how I’ve gath­ered evi­dence to quan­tify the 5-minute rule.

Da rules:

• A “point” is awarded for every time the cri­te­ria of the 5-minute rule is met.
• A goal can meet more than one cri­te­rion and can out-point the actual score of a match. i.e – a 2–0 win with goals in the 86th and 88th min­utes are both scored in the last five min­utes and the sec­ond is scored within 5 min­utes of the first. That’s 3 points)
• A sec­ond goal in 5 min­utes does not have to be scored by the same team. The idea is that play­ers “gee up” after scor­ing, but in other cases, they get care­less. Focus can eas­ily go one way or the other after a team scores a goal. Of course, the response to giv­ing up a goal can swing either way too.
• We’ll count extra time goals, but since the first and last five min­utes is 2/3rds of a 15 minute extra time period, we’ll reduce the rule to 2–3 minute rule.
• Goals scored within 5 min­utes of each other, but on either side of half (i.e. 44th minute and 48th minute,) still meet cri­te­ria even though there was a 15-minute half time break.
• Shootout goals don’t count.
• A caveat – because of the inex­act nature of tim­ing matches, I occa­sion­ally accepted a 6th minute goal.
• Yes, I’m aware that the para­me­ters of the 5-minute rule expand with each goal scored. But that’s part of the point; as goals are scored, we’re more likely to see more goals.
• Because of the afore­men­tioned rules and caveats, cou­pled with the fact that Math wasn’t my favourite sub­ject, this exer­cise is not exact.

Cham­pi­ons League group stage, 2008

Group A

31 goals, 6 points

Group B

31 goals, 11 points

Group C

39 goals 18 points

Group D

30 goals, 10 points

Group E

31 goals, 9 points

Group F

34 goals, 13 points

Group G:

28 goals, 12 points

Group H:

23 goals, 8 points

Total:

247 goals, 87 points 35% of goals affected by the 5-minute rule.

Over a third of goals were score scored on the lim­ited para­me­ters of the 5-minute rule. This would seem to lend legit­i­macy to the the­ory. But many would argue that this year’s pre­dictable group stage was full of can­non fod­der for the big Euro­pean clubs. Once the “real com­pe­ti­tion” begins, the knock­out rounds, the con­cen­tra­tion of qual­ity play­ers increases dras­ti­cally and silly men­tal errors drop off the table. Obvi­ously, I can’t come up with the stats for the games not yet played, but here are the stats for last year’s knock­out rounds:

Round of 16 – 35 goals, 21 points = 60% of goals affected by the 5-minute rule.

Quarter-Final – 18 goals, 8 points 44%

Semi-Final – 8 goals, 3 points* 38%

Final 2 goals, 1 point. 50%

In fact, the men­tal aspect of the game becomes more, not less sig­nif­i­cant as the phys­i­cal attrib­utes of the play­ers level off.

At the pin­na­cle of Euro­pean club foot­ball, the 5-minute rule runs ram­pant. In the last 10 Cham­pi­ons League finals, we see the following:

1999: Mario Basler pots a fee kick 6 min­utes into the match. In time added on, Sher­ing­ham ties it up. Moments later, Ole Gun­nar Sol­sk­jaer becomes the answer to the famous song, “Who put the ball in the Ger­mans’ net?”

2000: Fer­nando Mori­entes gets impa­tient and opens the scor­ing 6 min­utes before the end of the first half, set­ting the scene for a com­fort­able Real Madrid title.

2001: Gaizka Mendi­eta scores three min­utes into the match. Ste­fan Effen­berg ties it 6 min­utes into the sec­ond half. Bay­ern win on penalties.

2002: Lucio scores 5 min­utes after Raul’s open­ing strike. Zinedane Zidane hits a won­der vol­ley in the dying moments of the first half to take the glory.

2003 : No goals in reg­u­la­tion or extra time. Even the shootout was error-laden. Worst. Final. Ever.

2004: Like Mori­entes in 2000, Car­los Alberto gets impa­tient and scores 6 min­utes before the half. Demitri Alenichev scores 4 min­utes after Deco to blow the doors off Monaco and the “The Spe­cial One” is born.

2005: Mal­dini scores in the first minute. Her­nan Cre­spo scores 2 in the last 6 min­utes of the half. Scousers leave the sta­dium to find a drink. In the sec­ond half, Ger­rard, Smicer and Alonso scored in the famous “six min­utes of mad­ness” and Scousers leave the sta­dium to find a drink.

2006: Late in the game, Barca score 2 in four min­utes to finally put 10-man Arse­nal to the sword.

2007: In a replay of the ’05 final, Pippo Inzhagi scores at the stroke of half time. Liv­er­pool and Milan exchange goals in the last 8 min­utes, but Kuyt’s 89th minute strike doesn’t leave enough time for another famous comeback.

2008: United have a hand­ful of gilt-edged chances early. Lam­pard cap­i­talised on the stroke of half time, pro­vid­ing the momen­tum for a sec­ond half Chelsea bar­rage. Penal­ties set­tle the mat­ter and red is the colour in Moscow.

So, with the excep­tion of the goal­less final, every one of the last ten cham­pi­ons League finals have seen a 5-minute rule goal (ore pretty darn close) scored.

MYTH: CONFIRMED.

So what does this all mean? Sim­ply stated, when set­tling in to watch the knock­out rounds you need to fol­low these three rules: (1) Don’t be late, (2)Don’t leave early, (3) Don’t panic. There’s always plenty of time for your team to turn its 1–0 goal lead to a 1–2 loss in short order.

Cham­pi­ons League Myth­busters: The 5 Minute Rule, 4.8 out of 5 based on 4 rat­ings