After Arsenal, Manchester City, Chelsea and Newcastle have all been noticed doing it, is the rise of the "Tactical Timeout" in football bordering on cheating, or simply a clever way for managers to get instructions to their team?
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00:00Right now there seems to be something of a goalkeeping epidemic in football. At some point
00:07in the first half of a big game, usually when their team are up against it, goalkeepers are
00:12picking up a small injury or a problem with their equipment that forces a small break in play. But
00:17not before the manager is able to gather some or all of his players together in a little huddle
00:21and just tweak how they're doing things on the pitch. What a happy coincidence for all involved.
00:25Or is it? Yes my friends, welcome to the brave new world of the tactical timeout.
00:34Now in the recent Champions League quarter-final second leg clash between Manchester City and Bayern
00:38Munich, Edison stopped play for around 30 seconds to a minute. Immediately following a period of Bayern
00:42possession and them just having narrowly missed a chance, there was something wrong with his boots
00:46so he couldn't take the goal kick, so he had to just sort that out. And while he did so, Pep Guardiola
00:50summoned Bernardo Silva over, gestured to him that the ball needed to go onto the left-hand side more
00:55than it was on the right-hand side, and mere minutes later, Manchester City get a penalty
00:59from that exact part of the pitch. But the thing is, Edison isn't the only goalkeeper doing things
01:03like this this season, an entire host of them across the Premier League and across Europe have become
01:07very, very good at this. The undeniable masters of it at the moment, Ony Kassi United's Nick Pope
01:12and Arsenal's Aaron Ramsdale, the latter of which used it to simply beautiful effect in the top of the
01:17table clash against City. Now in that game, Arsenal started fairly brightly, they had more of the ball,
01:21they were creating chances, but Manchester City very quickly got a handle on the situation and
01:25began turning the screw. They found Erling Haaland unmarked at the back post and were it for any
01:29Manchester City player gambling on his cutback, they would have gone 1-0 up. Ramsdale immediately
01:35looks to the bench, drops to the floor and just for good measure, throws off both of his boots in
01:39the process. The camera cuts to the touchline, presumably about to catch Arteta sending the
01:43physio on or calling back to the substitute goalkeeper, looking quite panicked at the fact his
01:47goalkeeper might be injured, but instead it doesn't find that, it finds the entire Arsenal team in a
01:52huddle on the touchline. The physio is not summoned and the substitute does not warm up and a minute
01:57later Ramsdale is back on his feet, ready to go and up until the point Manchester City get the first
02:02goal, Arsenal look pretty good. Same again, Newcastle versus Fulham earlier in the season,
02:06the Magpies haven't quite got a handle on the game, they win a corner but as soon as the ball is
02:10turned over, oh no, Nick Pope goes to ground. The Sky commentary team are baffled by this,
02:15what could possibly have hurt Nick Pope when he's had virtually nothing to do all day?
02:19Oh jeepers, hope he's alright. The physio is summoned this time and he goes to have a quick
02:23look to see if everything's okay with Nick Pope and anyhow takes the opportunity to give his team
02:27a quick talking to. And you're not going to believe this, Nick Pope was absolutely fine,
02:31back on his feet within a minute and the game resumed. So if you somehow haven't quite grasped
02:35the concept of my tone right now, it's that there's nothing wrong with Edison's boot or Ramsdale's
02:39foot or Pope's body in general, it's that goalkeepers are told to go down in these moments,
02:44either from the bench or pre-game, in order to buy their team a timeout. And these seem
02:49to exclusively take place in the first half of games because as anybody who watches football will
02:53tell you, referees seem to use a different watch for the first 45, don't they? Someone could be
02:58down for an hour, they would still just stick up two minutes at the end. If you try that sort of
03:02nonsense in the second half, you're probably going to get every single second added on,
03:05but do it in the first and nobody gives a shit. In fact, as recently as March of this year,
03:09Chelsea's women's manager Emma Hayes even spoke out about this after their side lost 3-1 in the
03:14Conti Cup final. She accused Arsenal goalkeeper Manuela Zinsberger of going down three times to
03:19force a tactical timeout during the game. So the question is, is this cheating? Now the rules of
03:24the game state that when a player is injured, they must leave the field of play and that rule was
03:28introduced to effectively stop players feigning an injury to time waste. It means that the game can
03:32continue without them and if you do have to be treated on the field, you still have to be removed
03:35before you can re-enter it. But the exemption to this rule is if you are a goalkeeper because you
03:40can't just take the goalkeeper off and continue with the game because that would be really silly.
03:44So when one of them is injured or needs some kind of treatment, the game is forced to effectively
03:48completely stop. Which is of course allowing these team talks to happen and you could argue,
03:52giving the team doing it an advantage. So what the game's governing bodies are going to have to do is
03:56look at whether or not that advantage is an unfair one and if it is, how best to deal with it.
04:00Because it's all well and good just to say it's unsporting behaviour or it's time wasting and give a yellow card
04:05for doing it. But how do you prove either way if it's genuine? And even if it is a bit shady,
04:10it's not like the advantage it provides is one that was hitherto unimaginable before goalkeepers
04:15started pretending they had a slightly sore leg. Like timeouts are a thing that exists in plenty
04:19of other sports. So it might well be that the only way to stop teams attempting to force a timeout
04:24would be to actually give them a timeout. I don't know how I feel about that. Like what are the three
04:29things American sports have that British sports don't? Well one, really annoying picture in picture
04:34advertising too.
04:51So the question for you all today, is the act of a goalkeeper feigning an injury or just having some
04:56other kind of problem to force a break in play, allowing the manager to reorganise his tactics
05:01in some kind of quasi timeout? Is that cheating? Should it be banned? And if so, how would you ban it?
05:09All that good stuff in the comments below. And of course, don't forget to like, share and subscribe.
05:12Welcome to the 442 YouTube channel. I can't even remember if I said my own name at the start,
05:15but it's Adam Cleary by the way. You can get me on Twitter at Adam Cleary, C-L-E-R-Y. The entire 442 social
05:20spectrum is at 442. And until next time, my friends, I will see you soon. And to answer your
05:26other question, yes, yes, this is my favorite top in the world. Goodbye.
05:30Bye.