Nine games have been played in Qatar so far, and fans have bore witness to some marathon matches with a combined total of nearly minutes of injury time having been added.
Keen viewers at home who have savoured every minute so far will have watched two full extra matches of football thanks to the elongated stoppages.
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Added Time in Each World Cup Match So Far
- Qatar vs Ecuador: 5, 5
- England vs Iran: 14, 10
- Netherlands vs Senegal: 2, 8
- USA vs Wales: 4, 9
- Argentina vs Saudi Arabia: 5, 8
- Denmark vs Tunisia: 5, 8
- Mexico vs Poland: 3, 7
- France vs Australia: 6, 7
- Morocco vs Croatia: 8, 4
- Germany vs Japan: 6, 8
- Spain vs Costa Rica: 5, 7
- Belgium vs Canada: 3, 6
- Switzerland vs Cameroon: 2, 7
- Uruguay vs South Korea: 1, 8
Although it is not uncommon for matches this fiercely contested to have substantially longer injury times, this World Cup has left fans puzzled with only two halves of football seeing under five minutes added on.
In the England-Iran match, there were a total of 24 minutes of added time following concussion-related injuries, as well as 10 substitutions and a string of goals. This culminated in almost 117 minutes of football, close to the total you’d see in a match forced to extra-time.
Enjoying the amount of time that is being added on by the officials at #QatarWorldCup2022 there is too much time wasting in football!
— Jamie Carragher (@Carra23) November 21, 2022
So, what has changed?
It is interesting to note that FIFA are eager to cut down on time wasting in this tournament, promising to add further stoppage time for VAR reviews, cards, penalties and celebrations.
“Celebrations might last one or one and a half minutes,” said Pierluigi Collina, the chairman of the FIFA referees committee.
“It’s easy to lose three, four or five minutes, and this has to be compensated at the end.
“We want to avoid matches lasting for 40-45 minutes of active play. This is unacceptable.”
Taking all this into account, games throughout the tournament will most likely run for near enough or over 100 minutes, as we have seen in all six games thus far.
If we rewind four years ago the last World Cup in 2018, the statistical analysis website FiveThirtyEight analysed 32 matches, which featured a total of 3194 stoppages.
Throughout those 32 fixtures, an average of 6 minutes and 59 seconds were added at the end of the halves. Using FIFA’s own guidance on the matter, FiveThirtyEight states that the the correct average should have been as high as 13 minutes and 10 seconds.
In this respect, the longer injury times seen at this World Cup may set an important precedent for domestic football to follow, cutting out time wasting and maximising actual in-play action.
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