Stoppage Time in Football

About:

• Football uses a running clock unlike basketball or hockey, which does not stop even when the game is interrupted for various reasons such as substitutions, goals scored or injuries to players.
• According to the International Football Association Board’s Laws of the Game, the referees add time on for substitution, assessment and/or removal of injured players, wasting time, disciplinary sanctions, medical stoppages permitted by competition rules, delays relating to video assistant referee (VAR) checks and reviews, any other cause, including any significant delay to a restart, such as goal celebrations.
• The stoppage time is calculated by taking into account all such interruptions in play during a half and the fourth official raises an electronic board displaying the time added on at the end of each half.
• However, the play can go on for longer than the added-on time if the on-field referee feels that there have been further interruptions during the injury time warranting its extension.
• The law says that the referee must not compensate for a timekeeping error during the first half by changing the length of the second half.
• However, traditionally, second-half stoppage time has been found to be longer than that of the first half.

History:

• A game between English clubs Aston Villa and Stoke City in 1891 is widely believed to be the trigger for the introduction of injury time in football.

Extra Time:

• While terms like injury time and additional time have been used interchangeably for stoppage time, extra time is different.
• It is the period of time added to a knockout game to determine a winner if the scores are tied even after the regular 90 minutes and the stoppage time.
• Typically, the extra time is 30 minutes (two halves of 15 minutes).