Time after time: World Cup’s record match durations after new Fifa directive

So much for football being a game that lasts 90 minutes. Or the sight of a fourth official holding up a board showing two or three minutes of added time. At this tournament the 100 minute-plus match is becoming the new normal.

England’s 6-2 victory against Iran on Monday lasted a record‑breaking 117 minutes, with 14 minutes 8 seconds of stoppage time in the first half and 13 minutes 8 seconds in the second. Argentina’s shock 2-1 defeat against Saudi Arabia on Tuesday was not far behind, lasting 111 minutes. Forget Fergie Time, welcome to Fifa Time.

The reason, Fifa has confirmed, is down to a new directive to ensure all “unnatural lost time” is added at the end of each half. In Qatar it has asked officials to more accurately monitor when a game is stopped for goal celebrations, time wasting, video assistant referee decisions, substitutions, penalties and red cards – even if it means extending a match by many minutes.

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Pierluigi Collina, the chairman of Fifa’s referees committee, said last week: “If we want to have more active time, we need to be ready to see this kind of additional time given. Think of a match where in a half there are three goals. The celebration normally takes one to one and a half minutes. With three goals, basically you lose five, six minutes. So what we really want to do is to accurately calculate the time to be added.”

According to Opta, the average game time in the first six matches of this World Cup was 106 minutes 12 seconds, compared with 97 minutes 12 seconds in 2018. It said the four halves with the most stoppage time in a World Cup match since records began in 1966 were all on Monday, with time added on in the second halves of USA v Wales and Senegal v Netherlands both being more than 10 minutes. That was before the added time in Argentina’s second half against Saudi Arabia, which came to 14 minutes.

Some of that was down to extended injury breaks: the Iran goalkeeper, Alireza Beiranvand, sustained concussion after a clash of heads against England and the Saudi defender Yasser al-Shahrani was knocked out by a flying knee from his own keeper, Mohammed al-Owais, in injury time.

Collina made Fifa’s position clear, saying: “If we want to protect the image of the game we must calculate time and add it on at the end of each half. We do not want matches where the ball is only in play for 43, 44 or 45 minutes. We must make sure the time is fair for both teams.”

Ifab, football’s law-making body, rejected a proposal for games to be reduced to 60 minutes of “effective playing time” with the clock stopped when the ball goes out of play. Last season the ball was in play on average in the Premier League for just over 55 minutes but in some leagues it can drop as low as 45 minutes.

Elsewhere, there was another strange twist with the capacity of Qatar’s eight stadiums officially growing by 12 per cent.

Overnight the Al Bayt Stadium, which hosted the opening game, went from 60,000 in the pre-tournament guide to 68,895 on the official website – while the biggest stadium, the Lusail, went from 80,000 to 88,966.

It came after fans were left confused by attendances breaching stadium capacity in every game.

A source close to the organisers insisted the original numbers reflected Fifa’s requirements for stadiums to have a minimum of 80,000, 60,000 and 40,000 capacities. The Qataris have since found that the number of seats they needed for broadcast, media and sponsorship purposes was less than expected, hence the capacity increases.

The source added that the Lusail can seat 92,000 before broadcast and media requirements. Overall the combined capacities listed on Qatar’s World Cup site increased from a combined 380,000 to 426,221 on Tuesday.

A second mystery remains, however: why there seems to be a lot more empty seats than are claimed in the official attendance figures.

Official figures suggest that over 88,000 people watched Saudi Arabia shock Argentina at the Lusail Stadium on Tuesday – less than a thousand shy of capacity – but pockets of available seating were visible across the venue.

The first and most likely explanation is ticket holders not showing up. The biggest gaps at all matches – especially the visibly under-attended Senegal v Netherlands match on Monday – are those in the most expensive seats that run down the side of the pitch in the first two tiers. This could mean sponsors or invited guests have chosen not to attend.

It could also be that tickets are held by local fans who are unable to make the match. Although Fifa has confirmed that Qatar is among the nations to have bought the greatest share of the 3 million available tickets, not surprising for a host nation, the precise number sold has not been published.