England-Iran, record recovery: 29 minutes

The double whistle in the 60th minute, the triple in the 59th minute of the second half. Adding up the recoveries of the first and second half, therefore, England-Iran lasted the beauty of 119 minutes, an eternity. In the first half of the game, obviously, the violent clash between two Iranian players took its toll, with the doctors who rescued goalkeeper Beiranvand, in pain and confused after hitting his defender head-on. In the event of a blow to the head, extreme caution is needed and there has been caution. The assignment of the 14 minutes of recovery was therefore understandable, with the end of the first half however whistled by Raphael Claus when the expected recovery had already been missed. In the official tally, it’s already one minute longer.

Another time

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In the second half, however, the extra time of 10 minutes seemed less justified beyond the many changes. However, a hold-up in the English area led the Var room to call the Brazilian referee back when the match was just about to end: in these cases, time is running out and, now that Mehdi Taremi has converted the penalty, the 13 minutes were already over . It is not difficult to imagine that such a recovery had never been achieved during a World Cup and for this reason England-Iran becomes the match with the longest regulation times in the history of the World Cup.