It’s in the dying moments of a college soccer game. The fans in the bleachers stand on their feet, hoping for a last minute miracle from their beloved team. Then the announcer’s voice is heard loudly around the stadium.

“Ten, nine, eight, seven…”

The fans in the stands that follow international soccer have their heads in their hands.

In many circumstances, the game is over before the announcer even begins his or her countdown. Once a player sees the seconds flying by on the scoreboard in the final minute, they cannot help but feel the time slipping away. As has been seen in many college soccer games, the players tend to give up on their attacks if it seems unlikely they will be able to get close enough to goal for a shooting opportunity. And God forbid the winning team has the ball. You’d be guaranteed that absolutely nothing would happen. No team, in their right mind, in a winning situation, would dare risk giving up possession with a victory so close at hand.

So what happens in these final moments? The clock is killed. The moment a countdown begins, the game ends.

Soccer, around the world, is known for its fluidity of play and non-stop movement. In most countries, even in the United States professional leagues, the games start at zero min. and counts up to 90. Only in college soccer, which is mostly predominant in the U.S . and Canada, is there a “running clock” which counts down from 90 min. to zero.

What does a referee do in college soccer when there is an injury or someone is wasting time? They have the option to stop the clock.

Stopping the clock equals a time out.

No one else in the world would allow that. The thought of having a timeout during a soccer match, to any fan of soccer in any other country in the world, would be simply outrageous. It completely kills the fluidity of the game when there is a possibility that the clock can be stopped for an indefinite amount of time in the middle of a match.

Let’s go back to the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup. It’s the quarterfinals between the U.S . and Brazil. It’s the 119th minute of overtime, and Brazil is winning 2-1. Imagine if college rules of timing were set up for professional situations. The U.S . probably would have never won that game because there never would have been any stoppage time. The momentum that led up to Megan Rapinoe’s delivery to Abby Wambach’s powerful 122nd minute header that sent the U.S . and Brazil into a shootout wouldn’t have happened.

The simple fact is that the Americanization of soccer has destroyed some late-game, nail-biting situations that could have happened with a stoppage time style of adding minutes to the end of games. Running clocks work for football and basketball. In fact, they thrive on it. The final minutes on the clock for the average closely contested football and basketball game can seem to last ages. But what happens in the final moments of a countdown in soccer?

In most situations, nothing.