Pierluigi Collina was a FIFA referee himself for a long time, and perhaps even the best of all: in his career he was voted World Referee of the Year six times in a row – since then that has never been achieved by a referee again. Collina is now the top referee boss at FIFA and thus also has a say in strategic issues and decisions in major tournaments.

One of these points is the stoppage time: it was surprisingly high again and again in the group games of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Where fans are already preparing for the half-time break or the end of the game, five or more minutes are suddenly added. Iran's Mehdi Taremi even scored his goal against England in the 13th minute of added time – a goal so late had never been seen before in a World Cup.

It is understandable that football fans are now asking themselves: is this all a matter of interpretation for the referees? Or a new policy from FIFA? Pierluigi Collina has now commented in more detail on exactly this point: When it comes to "lost time in the game", you have to differentiate between time that was wasted on purpose by the players (i.e. by playing time games) and time that was lost through the game itself.

For the latter, Collina also counts points that perhaps not every football fan would see as a loss of time: According to FIFA, the throw-ins in a game alone would lead to a loss of 9 minutes of playing time. Substitutions and goal celebrations would also cause delays. Even at the World Cup in Russia, the referees would have given much more stoppage time. FIFA is now applying this principle again in Qatar and of course has to take into account the delays caused by the VAR.

FIFA itself quoted Collina as saying: "There has been a problem with games with less than 50 minutes of actual playing time for a long time," said Collina. "People want to see football, more football. And we, FIFA and the IFAB, have been asked to do something about it for years." To put it simply: only when the ball actually rolls do the referees deduct it from the playing time. Everything else is replayed.

Those: FIFA