Something about Soccer

If a player is 5% short of the level they need to be to complete a 90 minute match, given its demands, then that player may well concede the half-a-second, or the half-a-meter, to the opposition that leads to the game's decisive moment. Winning and losing are literally separated by these margins, and so it will come as no surprise that a good deal of work has been done on the physical demand of the game, so that coaches know what physiological level players need to be at to avoid fatigue.

What if I told you that on average, a player will have a TOTAL of between 60 and 90 seconds of ball time in the entire 90 minutes? Amazingly, this is the time that a player has to swing the match. One decisive through ball, one strike, one dribble and pass, but a total of about a minute in a 90 minute match. It's no wonder that work off the ball becomes so important!
-The Physiology of Football