WHY NOT END THE GAME WHEN THE STREETLIGHTS COME ON?

That might be a problem in the developing world, where aspiring players might make do with a vacant lot, but streetlights might be nonexistent or unreliable.

Determining the end of a footie game?  It's the complete opposite of football, where Vince Lombardi could say "you don't lose, but sometimes the clock runs out on you" with near certainty on when that clock was going to run out, as the two minute warning began as a pause to synchronize the unofficial scoreboard clock with the official timekeeper's stopwatch.  These days the scoreboard clock is almost always right, and the two minute warning a water break for the players, a bathroom break for the fans, and an opportunity to sell colored water in blue cans to guys who will thus have to take another bathroom break.

Once the clock gets to ninety minutes, a functionary notes there will be a few more minutes of "stoppage time," determined by a formula that might be more arcane than sailing's handicap rating formulas.  Even then, there's no well-defined end to it.

First case in point:  Turkey playing the United States during pool play.  I dip into the tilt late, it's tied with seven minutes of stoppage time being shown in the on-screen scoreboard.  Match goes into the 97th minute and keeps going into the 98th minute and Turkey is awarded an out-of-bounds play that they convert into a go-ahead goal.  One player was in the right place to clean up a deflection.  A few seconds later, game ends, the Turks get a happy flight home and four years to stew or to make plans.

Second case in point, a day or two later:  Iran playing Egypt in pool play.  Somehow, out of all the pairings to designate as the pride game, it was that pairing, in Seattle of all places, and a controversy of Koranic proportions took place long before hostilities with Iran commenced.  I dipped into that one, just in time for the second half rehydration break.  Network cuts away to sell stuff, but the clock keeps running.  Match is tied after 90 minutes, and the on-screen scoreboard suggests six minutes of stoppage time.  Match is still tied late in the 95th minute, and Iran converts a play that tallies what the announcers were calling the "game winning goal."  The Iranian players were surely celebrating like they had no plans to unpile until the final whistle blows.  But while the clock is running there's, you guessed it, replay review.  After further review, there's an Iranian player in the parallelogram (hey, if hockey has a trapezoid, why not?) ahead of the ball, and that's offside, even though there is neither a blue line to be seen nor a lineman raising his arms in the style of a crossing guard.  Thus the game remains tied, and neither side seems particularly anxious to do anything, and the referee might have determined enough stoppage time had run off, and that match ends.  Iran out, Egypt advances to be eliminated another day.

The timekeeping follies continued.  "World Cup 2026: Gonçalo Ramos' 94th-minute goal gives Portugal 2-1 win after Croatia's late tying goal is overturned."  That one I wasn't watching.

Croatia found the back of the net with the tying goal from Joško Gvardiol in the 103rd minute. However, Mario Pašalić was offside when the ball barely grazed off the head of Igor Matanović. Pašalić then played the ball to Gvardiol after it hardly touched Matanović before going off the head of Portugal's Renato Veiga.

That match was also during pool play, and a tie does not necessarily mean a side is eliminated, nor does it advance.

Once the elimination rounds begin, there must be a winner and a loser.  Should a game be tied after time has really, truly, finally run out, the match is settled by penalty kicks.  That's how one United States women's team won the tournament and another came in second.  I've learned that some associations eschew penalty kicks, awarding the win to the side that earned more corner kicks during the tilt.  (No, I'm not going to get into the rationale for earning corner kicks or how that's a demonstration of skill.)  Perhaps, rather than going to penalty kicks, let a tie be broken by corner kicks.  That gives all the players on both sides an opportunity to participate in the outcome.  Is the nature of a corner kick set play such that perhaps each side be offered at least three opportunities, in the style of hockey's shootouts, or if only one side converts the first opportunity, does the game end the way college football's start-on-the-25 overtimes do?