According to Opta, the five halves with the most stoppage time in a World Cup match since records began in 1966 have all occurred in Qatar this week.
Mehdi Taremi’s penalty for Iran against England came with 102:30 on the clock, making it the latest World Cup goal on record, excluding games with extra time.
Injuries, video assistant referee decisions, substitutions, penalties and red cards have all contributed to the trend, but footballers have all been accused of deliberately delaying restarts in order to wind down the clock.
Pierluigi Collina, chairman of the Fifa referees committee, confirmed that fourth officials had been instructed to keep track of time lost during the tournament.
“The purpose is to offer more show to those watching the World Cup,” he told reporters last week, BBC reports.
“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.
“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.”
Meanwhile, World Cup referee Danny Makkelie also warned there would be longer halves ahead of the tournament.
“This is one of the topics we have spoken about,” he told The Sun.
“It will not be strange to see six, seven, eight minutes of extra time. We did this in Russia and everybody was positive.”
Some fans have praised FIFA’s attempts to clamp down on time-wasting, while others have argued it has resulted in unnecessarily long games.
