It is often said that soccer is a sport in which the winner and the loser are divided in 90 minutes. The 2022 World Cup in Qatar is a little different. In this tournament, which kicked off on the 21st, long extra time appears one after another as if going into overtime.
A typical example is the second match in Group B, in which 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 game time 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. It happened that the second half alone ran for more than 55 minutes. 10 minutes and 3 seconds of extra time was added in the second half of the first leg of Group A, where the Netherlands and Senegal faced each other. The match between Qatar and Ecuador on the 21st, which was the opening game, was also given an additional 10 minutes, so the change in this tournament was clearly confirmed.
According to Opta, a sports statistics company, the records of 1st to 4th places with the most extra time since the World Cup in England have been broken since the beginning of this tournament.
It is because of the new guidelines of the International Football Federation (FIFA) referee committee that fearful extra time continues to emerge one after another from the players’ point of view. “Since the World Cup in Russia, we have tried to more accurately compensate for lost time during matches,” said FIFA Referee Pierruy Collina, nicknamed “The Alien.” I could see it,” he explained.
In fact, FIFA accurately calculates the time lost due to player injuries, goal ceremonies, player substitutions, and video review (VAR) in this tournament, but it means that the time that has passed is not simply blown away.
Such a change seems to change the world cup pattern. Not only will ‘bed soccer’, which takes time out due to intentional delay, disappear, but there is a high possibility that a ‘theatrical goal’ will be scored right before the end due to exhaustion from the extended game time. As the first winter World Cup in history, this tournament brings a new experience in many ways.