In the first matches of the World Cup in Qatar, football fans were surprised to dictate extra time. It was practically a different football than the one we knew from national championships and European cups.

>> Explaining why there are so many minutes of extra time in Qatar World Cup matches

Everything takes time: from timeouts and losses to the joy of scored goals

FIFA wants to significantly increase the actual time that football is played, so it has come to Qatar to measure everything. From the time a player leaves the field during a substitution, to how long the joy lasts after taking a goal.

To help people better understand the whole process, Pierluigi Collina, FIFA’s head of referees, compared it to attending a concert.

“It’s like at concerts: if you like the performance, you stand up, applaud and ask the soloist for an encore,” he noted, among other things. Pierluigi Collina.

The whole process started at the World Cup in Russia (since 2018), and now it continues its activity.

“We have given clear instructions: we want to increase actual playing time. The world wants to see more football. We started at the tournament in Russia, and now we have advanced,” he adds Collina.

In particular, the central player of the match is helped by a substitute. He must take into account any interruptions.

This includes the time a player has been injured, how much time he has been out during a substitution, how much time he spends analyzing a phase with VAR and even how long the celebration lasts after a goal is scored.

Under these conditions, it is easy to understand why there are so many minutes of overtime, which continues to surprise football fans (at the 2022 World Cup, it averaged about ten minutes of overtime per match).

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