It is often said that football is a sport where the winner and loser are shared in 90 minutes. The 2022 World Cup in Qatar is a little different. In this tournament, which started on the 21st, long extra time appears one after the other as if going to overtime.
A typical example is the second match in Group B, where England defeated Iran 6-2 on the 22nd. In this game, 14 minutes and 8 seconds were added after 45 minutes in the first half, and 13 minutes and 8 seconds were added in the second half, increasing the total time of the game by 27 minutes and 16 seconds. The extra time in the first half is the longest extra time in a World Cup since the 1966 World Cup in England.
It was similar in the first leg of Group B of the group stage between the United States and Wales, which was a different game. After the end of regular time in the second half, 10 minutes and 34 seconds of extra time passed. In the second half alone, more than 55 minutes were played. 10 minutes and 3 seconds of extra time were added in the second half of the first leg of Group A, where the Netherlands and Senegal faced each other. An extra 10 minutes was also given to the match between Qatar and Ecuador on the 21st, which was the opening match, so the change in this tournament was clearly confirmed.
According to Opta, a sports statistics company, the records from 1st to 4th place with the most extra time since the World Cup in England have been broken since the start of this tournament.
Due to the new guidelines of the referee committee of the International Football Federation (FIFA) the dreaded extra time continues to appear one after another from the players’ point of view. “Since the World Cup in Russia, we have tried to compensate more accurately for time lost during matches,” said FIFA Referee Pierruy Collina, nicknamed “The Alien.” I could see it,” he explained.
In fact, FIFA correctly calculates the time lost due to player injuries, goal ceremonies, player substitutions, and video review (VAR) in this tournament, but it means that the elapsed time is not just get blown away.
Such a change seems to change the pattern of the world cup. Not only will ‘bed football’, which takes time due to deliberate delay, disappear, but there is a strong possibility that a ‘theatrical goal’ will be scored just before the end due to time exhaustion extended game. As the first winter World Cup in history, this tournament offers a new experience in many ways.
