28 Ago What Does One More Minute of Football Really Cost?

More effective playing time means more running in LALIGA — but not every team pays the same physical price.

Five additional minutes of effective playing time are associated, on average, with around 2.7 extra kilometres of collective running.

That sounds simple. But it raises a more interesting question:

Does one extra minute of actual football cost every team the same?

Usually, Effective Playing Time (EPT) is used to normalise physical performance: metres per effective minute, high-speed distance per effective minute, and so on.

Here, we reversed the logic.

Instead of asking how much does a team run per minute of effective play?, we asked:

How much additional physical output is associated with one more minute of actual football?

We analysed the complete 2025/26 LALIGA EA SPORTS season, modelling each of the 20 teams independently across its 38 league matches.

The answer was clear for total distance.

Much less so for high-speed running.

1. One extra minute = +544 metres, on average

Across the 20 teams, one additional minute of EPT was associated with an average increase of:

+544 m of total team distance

Translated into match terms:

• +1 effective minute: ~544 m
• +3 effective minutes: ~1.6 km
• +5 effective minutes: ~2.7 km

But the league average hides a very large team effect.

Total distance associated with +1 min EPT

Adjusted for possession

Rank	Team	Additional total distance
1	Girona FC	+867 m
2	FC Barcelona	+862 m
3	RC Celta	+855 m
4	Deportivo Alavés	+813 m
5	Real Madrid	+686 m
6	CA Osasuna	+590 m
7	Villarreal CF	+580 m
8	Real Oviedo	+570 m
9	Elche CF	+547 m
10	Real Sociedad	+538 m
11	Sevilla FC	+519 m
12	Valencia CF	+509 m
13	Getafe CF	+493 m
14	RCD Espanyol	+439 m
15	Rayo Vallecano	+422 m
16	Atlético de Madrid	+411 m
17	Athletic Club	+384 m
18	RCD Mallorca	+277 m
19	Real Betis	+274 m
20	Levante UD	+243 m

The difference between Girona and Levante is around 3.6 times.

That does not mean Girona is 3.6 times fitter, more intense or more demanding.

It means something much more specific:

When its matches contain more effective playing time, Girona’s total team distance rises much more sharply than Levante’s.

So this is not a fitness ranking.

It is a ranking of how sensitive each team’s locomotor output is to additional effective play.

2. Could possession explain the effect?

This was the obvious alternative explanation.

We already know that running demands are different with and without the ball, and that total distance per minute is often higher out of possession.

So maybe this happened:

more EPT → less possession → more running

rather than:

more EPT → more running

To test that, we repeated the analysis controlling for each team’s possession percentage.

The result barely changed.

The league-wide average remained around:

+544 m per additional effective minute

That is important.

It suggests that the rise in total distance is not simply because teams spend relatively more time defending in matches with higher EPT.

The effect is fundamentally associated with more football being played.

3. High-speed running breaks the pattern

If more EPT simply meant a more physically intense match, we should expect the same relationship for distance above 21 km/h.

We did not.

The association with high-speed running was much more variable between teams and, in many cases, weak or practically absent.

>21 km/h distance associated with +1 min EPT

Adjusted for possession

Rank	Team	Additional HSR
1	FC Barcelona	+109 m
2	Girona FC	+84 m
3	Real Sociedad	+84 m
4	CA Osasuna	+71 m
5	Deportivo Alavés	+64 m
6	Real Madrid	+54 m
7	Real Oviedo	+43 m
8	Sevilla FC	+38 m
9	Rayo Vallecano	+33 m
10	RC Celta	+30 m
11	Villarreal CF	+28 m
12	Levante UD	+25 m
13	Athletic Club	+22 m
14	Atlético de Madrid	+19 m
15	Valencia CF	+10 m
16	Getafe CF	−3 m
17	Real Betis	−6 m
18	RCD Espanyol	−6 m
19	Elche CF	−7 m
20	RCD Mallorca	−9 m

This second ranking needs more caution.

For many teams, the relationship between EPT and high-speed running was statistically weak. The slightly negative values at the bottom should therefore not be interpreted as evidence that extra effective minutes cause those teams to run less at high speed.

The relevant conclusion is simpler:

There is no universal high-speed response to additional EPT.

Some teams increase.

Some barely change.

Some show slightly negative slopes.

4. Why does volume increase but intensity does not?

This is where the finding becomes useful from a coaching perspective.

An additional minute of effective play means one more minute in which players must remain active.

That naturally increases opportunities to accumulate:

• positional movement,
• support runs,
• defensive shifting,
• ball circulation,
• pressing adjustments,
• recovery movements,
• low- and moderate-speed displacement.

So total volume rises.

But high-speed running depends on what actually happens in that minute.

A long positional attack and a sequence of repeated transitions may both add one minute of EPT.

Physically, they are not the same minute.

One may contain relatively little HSR.

The other may contain several high-speed actions.

That is why the key distinction is:

The clock creates volume. The game creates intensity.

5. The same five minutes can have very different physical costs

For Girona, five additional effective minutes are associated with approximately 4.3 km of extra collective running.

For Levante, the same five minutes correspond to roughly 1.2 km.

Same increase in EPT.

Very different locomotor response.

That opens a more interesting question than simply asking whether teams run more when matches contain more actual football.

Why do some teams respond so much more strongly?

Possible explanations may include:

• pressing behaviour,
• defensive height,
• verticality,
• transition frequency,
• spatial occupation,
• possession structure,
• ball circulation speed,
• opponent behaviour,
• score-line dynamics.

This analysis does not identify which mechanism explains the difference.

But it shows very clearly that the mechanism is unlikely to be the same for every team.

6. What should coaches and performance staff do with this?

EPT should probably not be treated only as a denominator.

It is also part of the competitive load.

A match with 45 minutes of effective play and another with 60 minutes may last roughly the same clock time, but they are not the same physical event.

For post-match analysis, this means that total distance should not be interpreted independently of how much football was actually played.

For training design, it also suggests that increasing ball-in-play time mainly increases locomotor volume, while the effect on high-speed running depends much more on the tactical content of the task.

And for match preparation, a team expecting a game with high EPT should probably not assume that the only consequence will be “more intensity”.

The safer conclusion is:

More effective football means more total running. Whether it also means more high-speed running depends on how the game unfolds.

Methodological note

These findings are observational associations, not causal effects.

Each team was analysed independently across its 38 league matches. We first estimated the relationship between EPT and physical output and then repeated the models including possession percentage to test whether possession could explain the observed effect.

Therefore, when we say that one extra minute “costs” a team a certain number of metres, cost should be understood as the estimated seasonal association, not as a guaranteed causal response to artificially adding exactly one minute to a match.

This caution is especially important for high-speed running, where the relationships were much more variable and uncertain.

The real question is no longer whether more EPT means more running

It does.

The more interesting question is:

What tactical characteristics make one additional minute of effective football three or four times more physically expensive for some teams than for others?

That is where the next analysis should begin.