Why there is much stoppage time at the Qatar World Cup 2022

With only a few games into this World Cup, fans are seeing a developing scenario of long Stoppage time.

The five games so far have had about 85 minutes added on between them, with England’s match against Iran lasting an incredible 117 minutes and 16 seconds.

It is also part of a concerted effort by Fifa to clamp down on time-wasting by more accurately monitoring the amount of time the game is stopped. The trend continued with Tuesday’s first game, as Saudi Arabia’s shock win over Argentina clocked seven minutes of first-half stoppage time time, plus almost 14 minutes added at the end of the second half.

Chairman of Fifa’s referees committee Pierluigi Collina confirmed last week that fourth officials had been instructed to keep track of time lost during the game during the tournament in Qatar, something they had also tried to do at the previous World Cup in Russia in 2018.

“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,” he told reporters at a pre-tournament briefing.

“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.”

The result of this new approach was a number of records being broken.

England v Iran first half (13.59 minutes)
Argentina v Saudi Arabia second half (13.53)
England v Iran second half (13:05)
USA v Wales second half (10:32)
Senegal v Netherlands second half (10:03)

Unsurprisingly, all that added time led to some VERY late goals.