Why Spain Will Benefit From Qatar 2022’s Long Gruelling Matches

According to FIFA’s refereeing boss, Pierluigi Collina the vast amounts of time added on at Qatar 2022 World Cup games was “nothing new.”

“[At the last World Cup] In Russia [2018], it became quite normal for the fourth official to show the board with seven, eight, nine minutes on it,” he told the media, “we recommended our referees to be very accurate in calculating the time to be added at the end of each half to compensate to time lost due to a specific kind of incident.

“What we want to avoid is to have a match with 42, 43, 44, 45 minutes of active play. This is not acceptable. Whenever there will be an incident like an injury treatment, substitution slot, penalty kick, red card or celebration of a goal – I want to underline that because it is a moment of joy for one team, for the other maybe not – but it may last one or one and a half minutes.

“So imagine in a half there are two or three goals scored and it’s easy to lose five or six minutes and this team must be compensated at the end.”

Whether it was an unusually high number of stoppages in the opening rounds of games or just Collina’s instructions were being carried out with a greater degree of precision, the clock has been left to run longer than ever in this year’s group stage games.

Seeing the clock hit 100 minutes used to be something that only occurred if a game ran into extra time.

But at Qatar 2022 the average time for the first seven games was over a century.

The games England vs Iran and Argentina vs Saudi Arabia were closer to two hours.

It’s hard to argue that efforts to have more actual soccer played are not for the best and Collina’s directive has been applauded by pundits like CBS Sport’s Jamie Carragher.

“Enjoying the amount of time that is being added on by the officials at the Qatar World Cup 2022,” he wrote on Twitter, “there is too much time wasting in football.”

However, if you were going to choose a tournament to try this out, this edition of FIFA’s showpiece event seems like a strange option.

The winter scheduling of the competition means already fixtures are condensed and players have shorter periods to recover between games.

Not only that, many players come to the tournament having had no gap from the domestic seasons, which have also had more heavy schedules than usual because of the tournament.

Before the World Cup even began FIFPRO, the international player’s union which represents 65,000 professional footballers worldwide, was warning about the impact on player welfare.

Discussing a report, titled FIFA World Cup 2022: The Player Workload Journey, which warned of the potential for many players getting injured, Deputy General Secretary Simon Colosimo said: “The data emphasizes the mental and physical strain many national team players are facing because of a congested match calendar that does not properly consider their health and performance.

“I have no doubt each team will put on a tremendous show at the World Cup despite the challenging circumstances. However, all professional football stakeholders must refocus their priorities to ensure players benefit from a more balanced calendar and can perform at their peak during key moments of their careers.”

As the directive shows little sign of going away, so the question becomes who might benefit?

Spain’s gain

When you have to manage 100 rather than 90 minutes the physical exertion a side can manage diminishes substantially.

It’s harder to press opponents in possession with the same intensity for this length of time and it’s been noticeable that while some teams have tried to hassle the team with the ball, it has tended to be for controlled bursts.

“Fatigue” was cited as a factor by commentators analyzing both England and Wales’s disappointing second games.

However, one side stands out as benefiting from the trend of longer games; Spain.

Under Luis Enrique, the side has played a style based is based on dominating possession and passing opponents into oblivion.

This was perfectly demonstrated in a 7-0 win over Costa Rica where it clocked up a whopping 81.3%, the highest in a World Cup game since 1966.

The pass count was even more ridiculous, Spain completed 976 passes, which was nearly ten times more than its opponents.

Against tougher teams than Costa Rica, you’d imagine the stats would be less one-sided, but you would still think they would monopolize the ball.

As the tournament progresses making the other team chase the ball more will be a significant advantage, especially if they’ve already expended more energy than normal.

It should be noted that the last time Spain was victorious, over a decade ago in South Africa, the triumph was built on the same principles.

The team averaged 64.5% possession on route to victory, although the mere eight goals are often compared less favorably to other champions.

But what is inarguable was how effective the Tiki Taka passing philosophy was in enabling the Spaniards to dominate games.

That could be the critical factor in them going all the way again in Qatar.