The key measure for success is usually the ball-in-play time. <\/p>\n
Previously, the target was to get to 60 minutes, but that has proved very difficult to achieve.<\/p>\n
Even in Qatar, with all that added time, Fifa could only get up to 58:03 of actual football.<\/p>\n
So how does the 2026 World Cup compare? <\/p>\n
First off, the automatic six minutes applied for hydration breaks has been removed. This is effectively not part of a regular match time.<\/p>\n
The average length of matches at this World Cup is 96:08 – just over six minutes additional across both halves. <\/p>\n
In Qatar, it was 102 minutes 43 seconds for the first round of games – more than double the stoppage time.<\/p>\n
Yet in Russia it was 96 minutes 54 seconds, only slightly higher that this summer’s edition.<\/p>\n
All three tournaments had four on-field VAR reviews. <\/p>\n
So, games are shorter at this World Cup than at either of the previous two. <\/p>\n
But is this strategy backed up by the average ball-in-play time? <\/p>\n
In Russia, it was 54 minutes 50 seconds. With so much stoppage time, it should be no surprise that went up to 58 minutes eight seconds in Qatar<\/p>\n
There has been a small reduction to 57 minutes 22 seconds at this World Cup. Does that mean it has not quite worked.<\/p>\n
The best way to truly judge it might be to look at the relative ball-in-play time.<\/p>\n
What percentage of the length of a match is football being played?<\/p>\n
That is where we see this World Cup is the most effective – 59.38% of the match time has seen the ball in play. <\/p>\n
Qatar, with the games being so long, was below this at 56.86% and Russia at 56.25%. <\/p>\n
It is early days for Collina’s masterplan, but so far it appears to be working. <\/p>\n
Whether the same impact can last 380 Premier League matches might be more of a challenge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The key measure for success is usually the ball-in-play time. Previously, the target was to get to 60…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-645429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}