Why is There So Much Added Time in the World Cup Games?
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The 2022 World Cup is well underway in Qatar and we have had plenty of time to assess the tournament. One of the standout features of the 2022 World Cup has been the time added on at the end of each half.
Prior to the tournament, we were used to seeing a couple of minutes of added time at the end of the first half maximum unless there was a major stoppage.
At the end of matches, stoppage time could sometimes be as high as 5 minutes but was usually under that number.
However, just a few games into the 2022 World Cup and a pattern started to emerge. The amount of time being added to the end of matches was significantly higher than we have ever seen before.
That applies not only to previous World Cup tournaments but professional football leagues and cups across the planet.
If we take the first five matches of the 2022 World Cup as an example, we saw a total of 85 minutes added.
Usually, the maximum you would expect to see at the end of five matches is around 25 minutes, which means we saw an extra hour of football in the first five games of the 2022 World Cup alone.
The match between England and Iran lasted over 117 minutes, mainly due to an injury to the Iran goalkeeper, who eventually had to be substituted.
In the match between Argentina and Saudi Arabia, there were 7 minutes added to the end of the first half and over 13 minutes at the end of the second half. These are numbers we have never seen before in football so why is there so much time being added to World Cup games?
The Chairman of FIFA’s referees committee is former referee, Pierluigi Collina.
When discussing the added time in matches at the 2022 World Cup, Collina said, “In Russia, we tried to be more accurate in compensating for time lost during games and that's why you saw six, seven or even eight minutes added on,” before continuing, “Think about it: if you have three goals in a half, you'll probably lose four or five minutes in total to celebrations and the restart.”
As you would expect when having significant amounts of injury time added at the end of games, we have seen some late goals at this World Cup.
For example, Mehdi Taremi's penalty for Iran against England was scored in the 103rd minute, which is a record for the latest goal ever scored at a World Cup in normal time.
The added time is going to make for some extremely nervy moments come the knockout stages of the World Cup. Furthermore, it will be interesting to see if the timekeeping approach is adopted by club competitions in the future.
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