Referees are granting more and more minutes of extra time to avoid delays, but UEFA will not use these “absurd” rules in the competitions it organizes, Reuters reports.

UEFA says matches lasting more than 100 minutes are banned in European competitions

Zvonimir Boban, who holds the position of “head of football” at Uefa, disagrees with FIFA, which requires referees to take into account all moments of stoppage of play (goal celebrations, substitutions, injuries) when determining how many minutes of a half will be extended.

Thus, at World Cup from Qatar(like the women’s), many matches exceeded 100 minutes in total, and players complained that the workload would increase in an already busy schedule.

“This is absolute absurdity. In terms of player welfare, it’s a bit of a tragedy because we’re adding almost 12, 13, 14 minutes.

When you play 60, 65 minutes – I can speak from my experience, especially as a midfielder – when you get tired, it’s the last 30 minutes of the game. And then someone comes and adds another 15 minutes.

At the end of the season, there will still be about 500 minutes, that is, 5-6 games. This is too much, the number of injuries will increase.

I have criticized the busy schedule, the large number of matches so many times. We don’t listen to players and coaches… It’s crazy. It’s too much, so we won’t do it. Our orientations are different” – Zvonimir Bobanformer player of Dynamo Zagreb and Milan.

Roberto Rosetti, UEFA’s head of referees, backed Boban and said UEFA has been working for five years to increase the amount of time the ball is in play.

“There is something more important than the accuracy of overtime. Why do people love the Champions League so much? Because it’s intense, it’s fantastic, the players never stop. We are telling our referees to speed up the game recovery instead of focusing on stoppage time” – Roberto Rossetti.