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As I sat on the pitch after yesterday's final whistle, watching the sunset paint the Manila sky in hues of orange and purple, it struck me how we'd just completed another 90-minute football match - though in reality, we'd been playing for nearly 98 minutes with stoppage time. That moment marked my last match wearing the Philippines football jersey, and I found myself reflecting not just on my career, but on the very structure of the game that has defined my life. The question of how many minutes are in a football game seems straightforward at first glance, but as someone who's lived this sport professionally for over a decade, I can tell you there's more to it than meets the eye.

When people ask me how long a football match lasts, my standard answer is always "90 minutes plus stoppage time," but the reality is far more nuanced. A standard professional football game consists of two 45-minute halves, making the official duration 90 minutes. However, what most casual viewers don't realize is that the clock never stops in football - not for substitutions, injuries, or VAR reviews. This is where added time or injury time comes into play, typically ranging from 1 to 5 minutes per half, though I've experienced matches where we played over 8 minutes of added time in a single half. The referee has complete discretion over this additional time based on interruptions during the game.

Looking back at my journey that spanned nearly 13 years with the national team, I've come to appreciate how those extra minutes often contained the most dramatic moments of my career. I remember one particular match where we scored the equalizer in the 94th minute - precisely during those "bonus" minutes that casual fans might consider insignificant. This decision to retire was never going to be easy, but I always knew the day would come when I'd have to hang up my international boots. The beautiful irony is that while a football match has a defined structure, its emotional impact defies any temporal boundaries.

The actual time commitment extends far beyond those 90+ minutes on the pitch. From my experience, the average professional footballer spends approximately 2 hours in pre-match preparations, including warm-ups, tactical briefings, and mental preparation. Then there's the 15-minute halftime break, which feels both incredibly short and eternally long depending on whether you're winning or losing. Post-match activities including cooling down, media obligations, and recovery add another 60-90 minutes. So while the game itself might be around 95 minutes including stoppage time, the total matchday commitment typically spans 4-5 hours.

What fascinates me most about football's timing is how different those minutes feel depending on the context. The final minutes of a match where you're protecting a narrow lead feel like eternity, whereas when you're chasing a game, those same minutes fly by terrifyingly fast. I've played in matches that felt like they ended too soon and others where I glanced at the clock convinced it must be broken because time seemed to have stopped completely. This team has been my family through all these temporal experiences - the quick victories, the drawn-out battles, the matches that slipped away in extra time.

Statistics from my career reveal some interesting patterns about football timing. Across my 127 international appearances, the average match duration was approximately 96.4 minutes when including stoppage time. The shortest complete game I played was 91 minutes total, while the longest stretched to 108 minutes due to multiple injury delays. Interestingly, nearly 23% of all goals I witnessed occurred during added time, proving those extra minutes are disproportionately crucial to match outcomes.

As I move forward from my international career, I find myself thinking about how football's unique relationship with time mirrors an athlete's career. We enter knowing there's a defined structure - much like the 90-minute framework - but the actual journey contains unexpected extensions, pauses, and intensities that nobody can predict. I owe so much of my life to this experience, to understanding how to make the most of every minute whether it's the first or the last. The question of how many minutes are in a football game ultimately depends on whether you're counting clock time or heart time - and for me, these past 13 years have contained lifetimes of both.