How Long is a Football Match Including Half-Time?

Typically, a football match will last 90 minutes with an additional 15 minutes of half-time. These 90 minutes are split up into two separate 45 minute sections, known as halves.

There is then a 15-minute interval between these two halves to give the players and officials time to take a break and for the fans to utilise stadium facilities, or get some food.

Here, Football Park will take a look the full length and potential length of a football match, including all the distinct factors which could incur any additional time onto the match at hand.

Law 7- The Duration of the Match

How Long is a Football Match Including Added Time

This is a question which is tricky to answer specifically. However, at the end of each 45-minute half, the fourth official will raise his or her board with a single number on it indicating how much time will be added on to the half.

It is not necessarily the case that the number of minutes added on will be the same for each half, however, depending on any stoppages throughout the half, this could be the case. Typically, the second half would include more added time, unless there is a large stoppage in the first.

Different types of stoppages can affect how much added time there is. These can include: injuries, time-wasting, substitutions, fouls/disciplinary actions, celebrations, any crowd disruptions, or more recently, Video Assistant Referee (VAR) reviews.

All of the stoppage types above can change the amount of added time there will be, although how much time is lost because of it, is completely independent of each other and the time each disruption takes can change each time. What we can usually predict, however, is that combining the first half added time with the second half added time, you can expect a minimum of five minutes added at the very least.

How Long is a Football Match Including Extra Time

As we have previously mentioned, a football match consists of 90 minutes, with 15 minutes for half-time plus any added time onto either of the two halves. Another factor which lengthens the duration of a game is extra time.

If you are attending a league fixture or the group stage of a competition, this typically will not include any extra time. Extra time usually comes into play at the latter stages of tournaments, and usually used in a knockout format.

Extra time is activated when two teams cannot be separated after the full 90 minutes plus added time. Extra time is an additional 30 minutes of play, which is split into two further halves of 15 minutes each. Teams are usually allowed to make more substitutions in this period, which therefore would mean even more added time onto the game.

So, we now have the 90 minutes of football, plus the 15 minutes for half-time and a minimum of five minutes added time, as well as extra-time. This would mean a match including all of these additions could last up to two and a half hours give or take. However, there is one more factor which can increase the length of a single football game.

How Long is a Football Match Including a Penalty Shootout

Using the same example in the section above, if the teams are now still level after 120 minutes, plus any stoppages and intervals, the match will head to a penalty shootout.

It works like this. There is a coin toss to decide which teams goes first and which end of the pitch the shootout will be at. Both teams then take up to five penalties each, or until the team ahead in the shootout has a lead which cannot be equalled or overtaken by the time each team has taken five apiece. If the teams are level after five each, the shootout will then go to sudden death, which in theory, could go on forever, but will just keep going until one team scores and the other misses.

Like added time, there is no specific answer to this question, since the shootout could end after each team takes three penalties each, or it could be 34 kicks long, like the EFL Cup third round between Preston and Fulham earlier last season.

All THIRTY-FOUR penalties from Preston vs Fulham 🤯 pic.twitter.com/yRI71mDfYh

— Sky Sports Football (@SkyFootball) September 18, 2024

How Long is a Football Match Including Second Legs

Everything we have talked about before can happen in single leg formats, however, if the tie is a two-legged format, then extra time and penalty shootouts can only be activated after the second leg.

In the first leg, the match is 90 minutes long, plus the 15-minute interval and any added time. Second legs are the exact same thing as the first leg. Two 45-minute halves with a 15-minute interval and added time.

Aggregate will come into play at the end of the 90 minutes of the second leg. The aggregate is the combined score of both legs. If, by the end of the 90 minutes in leg two, there is a winner, then the match concludes after the 90 minutes. If the aggregate score is level, however, we then look at extra time and penalties.