The Absolute Grind to Find a Football Release Time
Man, I needed to know this. I wasn’t just looking for some random pundit’s guess about who was going to start. I had a really specific reason tied up with a small pool I was running, and for it to be legit, I needed the absolute, official, stamped-by-the-referee release time for the starting elevens. We’re talking Albacete against Granada, a Second Division game, so it’s not like the major leagues where every minute is tracked by ten different agencies. This required actual digging, and let me tell you, it felt like pulling teeth.
I started where everyone starts: Google. I jammed in “Albacete vs Granada confirmed XI time” and immediately waded through five pages of garbage sports aggregators that just recycle news. They all just give the generic rule: “Usually 60 minutes before kick-off.” Yeah, thanks, Captain Obvious. I needed the exact minute the official club channels or the league delegated released it, because sometimes these Segunda teams drop the graphic 15 minutes earlier than the actual official sheet submission time, or sometimes the local media leaks it first.
My first proper move was to attack social media. I hit up Albacete Balompié’s X account. Just generic hype videos. Then I checked Granada CF’s account. Same deal. Nothing scheduled, no announcement saying, “Tune in at X:XX PM for the official team news.” I scrolled deep into their timelines, looking at their previous match day posts. I opened up five different past match tweets just to see the timestamp on the lineup graphic. The times were inconsistent, which was infuriating. One game they dropped it 62 minutes before the whistle, the next it was 70 minutes. This wasn’t a standard, this was just random chaos.
The Dead End and the Pivot
After about an hour of this pointless scrolling, I realized I was making the classic mistake: looking for the public release instead of the administrative release. The official team sheet has to be submitted to the match delegate at a very specific time, usually tied to league rules. So, I pivoted my search. I typed in “La Liga Hypermotion rules match sheet submission time.”
This is where things got messy. I found a bunch of extremely dry PDFs on the official La Liga site that looked like tax documents. They mentioned the delegate, they mentioned the substitution rules, but the language around the official timing of the XI submission was vague—something about “no later than one hour before the designated start time.” Vague isn’t good enough for my purposes.
While I was reading through Clause 4.3.c, my phone started blowing up with calls from my cousin. He was asking me about a totally separate thing—the logistics of picking up some old furniture he bought off Craigslist. I ignored him for a few minutes, but he was persistent. I had to take the call, and it killed my momentum. I spent twenty minutes talking about pickup trucks and cheap sofas, totally forgetting about Spanish football teams.
Reverse-Engineering the Actual Time
When I got back to the computer, I knew I had to be smarter. I stopped relying on generalized rules and started focusing specifically on Albacete’s internal pattern. Since their social media drops were inconsistent, I searched for local sports reporters who cover the team daily. These guys usually know the drill because they have their own deadlines.
I stumbled upon a local Albacete sports radio host’s personal blog. Deep down in a comment section, someone asked him this exact question weeks ago, and he answered in passing that the club usually submits the official list to the referee delegate exactly 75 minutes prior to the scheduled kick-off, and the official social media team receives the green light to post the graphic within five minutes of that official submission. This 75-minute window was the key I was looking for.
I cross-referenced this new 75-minute theory with the timestamps of the last three home games I had looked at earlier. Bingo. Even though the social media posts varied slightly (70, 72, 68 minutes before kick-off), the pattern held that the information was officially available starting at T-75. The little variation was just due to how fast the person running the social media account was at hitting the “post” button after receiving the internal confirmation email.
So, there you have it. You won’t find a press release saying, “We release the lineup at exactly 75 minutes before the match.” You find it by ignoring the vague official rulebook, ditching the massive sports news sites, and sifting through local knowledge until you figure out the club’s established internal procedure. The full and proper lineups for Albacete vs. Granada will be released to the match officials, and thus officially available, exactly 75 minutes before the ball is kicked.