PHOTO: Twitter
The long extra time has been a talking point during the run-up to the football World Cup in Qatar.
In England’s meeting with Iran, the total added time amounted to almost 30 (!) minutes.
Now the legendary referee Pierluigi Collina reveals why.
The FIFA World Cup in Qatar is only a couple of days old, but the added time in the matches has already become a big talking point. In normal circumstances, most people who follow football are probably used to the refereeing team adding 3-4 minutes to the two halves. But during the matches that have taken place so far during the World Cup, we have seen something completely different.
Long additional times
It has not been unusual for the added time in the two halves of the matches to have amounted to 10 minutes, and in some cases even more than that. If you take Monday’s match between England and Iran as an example, almost an extra half of the game was played – since the referee chose to add almost half an hour to extra time.
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The many and long additional minutes have caused viewers to ask themselves questions – but now there is an explanation for it all.
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Icon explanation
It is the now retired judge icon Pierluigi Collina who in an interview with ESPN came out and told the truth about why it looks the way it does.
– When we talk about time that is lost in a match, we must distinguish between the time that we miss due to events in the match and the time that is lost due to players actively worming. In a match, on average, nine minutes are lost just because of, for example, throw-ins.
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Collina continues, and explains that nowadays people are more clear about putting in the time that actually disappeared during the course of the match.
– We are more accurate in calculating the time that should be spent on each half. Already during the World Cup in Russia, we told the players to “don’t be surprised if the fourth official’s sign shows many minutes”.
– If you take a goal as an example, it takes about a minute and a half with the associated celebration. What we really want to achieve is to accurately calculate how many minutes have actually been lost.