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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00:00 Right now there seems to be something of a goalkeeping epidemic in football.
00:06 At some point in the first half of a big game, usually when their team are up against it,
00:11 goalkeepers are picking up a small injury or a problem with their equipment that forces
00:15 a small break in play.
00:17 But not before the manager is able to gather some or all of his players together in a little
00:20 huddle and just tweak how they're doing things on the pitch.
00:23 What a happy coincidence for all involved.
00:25 Or is it?
00:26 Yes, my friends, welcome to the brave new world of the tactical timeout.
00:33 Now in the recent Champions League quarterfinal second leg clash between Manchester City and
00:37 Bayern Munich, Ederson stopped play for around 30 seconds to a minute.
00:41 Immediately following a period of Bayern possession and them just having narrowly missed a chance,
00:44 there was something wrong with his boots so he couldn't take the goal kick.
00:47 So he had to just sort that out.
00:49 And while he did so, Pep Guardiola summoned Bernardo Silva over, gestured to him that
00:53 the ball needed to go onto the left hand side more than it was on the right hand side.
00:56 And mere minutes later, Manchester City get a penalty from that exact part of the pitch.
01:01 But the thing is, Ederson isn't the only goalkeeper doing things like this this season.
01:04 An entire host of them across the Premier League and across Europe have become very,
01:08 very good at this.
01:09 The undeniable masters of it at the moment are Newcastle United's Nick Pope and Arsenal's
01:13 Aaron Ramsdale, the latter of which used it to simply beautiful effect in their top of
01:17 the table clash against City.
01:19 Now in that game, Arsenal started fairly brightly.
01:20 They had more of the ball, them creating chances, but Manchester City very quickly got a handle
01:24 on the situation and began turning the screw.
01:26 They found Erling Haaland unmarked at the back post and were it for any Manchester City
01:30 player gambling on his cutback, they would have gone 1-0 up.
01:33 Ramsdale immediately looks to the bench, drops to the floor and just for good measure, throws
01:38 off both of his boots in the process.
01:40 The camera cuts to the touchline, presumably about to catch Arteta sending the physio on
01:44 or calling back to the substitute goalkeeper, looking quite panicked at the fact his goalkeeper
01:47 might be injured.
01:48 But instead, it doesn't find that.
01:50 It finds the entire Arsenal team in a huddle on the touchline.
01:53 The physio is not summoned and the substitute does not warm up and a minute later Ramsdale
01:58 is back on his feet, ready to go and up until the point Manchester City get the first goal,
02:03 Arsenal look pretty good.
02:04 Same again, Newcastle vs Fulham earlier in the season.
02:06 The Magpies haven't quite got a handle on the game.
02:08 They win a corner but as soon as the ball is turned over, oh no, Nick Pope goes to ground.
02:13 The Sky commentary team are baffled by this.
02:15 What could possibly have hurt Nick Pope when he's had virtually nothing to do all day?
02:19 Oh jeepers, Popey's alright.
02:20 The physio is summoned this time and he goes to have a quick look to see if everything's
02:23 okay with Nick Pope and anyhow, takes the opportunity to give his team a quick talking
02:28 to.
02:29 And you're not going to believe this, Nick Pope was absolutely fine, back on his feet
02:31 within a minute and the game resumed.
02:33 So if you somehow haven't quite grasped the concept of my tone right now, it's that there's
02:36 nothing wrong with Edison's boot or Ramsdale's foot or Pope's body in general.
02:41 It's that goalkeepers are told to go down in these moments, either from the bench or
02:45 pre-game in order to buy their team a timeout.
02:49 And these seem to exclusively take place in the first half of games because, as anybody
02:52 who watches football will tell you, referees seem to use a different watch for the first
02:57 45, don't they?
02:58 Someone could be down for an hour, they would still just stick up two minutes at the end.
03:01 You try that sort of nonsense in the second half, you're probably going to get every single
03:04 second added on, but do it in the first and nobody gives a shit.
03:07 In fact, as recently as March of this year, Chelsea's women's manager Emma Hayes even
03:11 spoke out about this after their side lost 3-1 in the Conte Cup final.
03:14 She accused Arsenal goalkeeper Manuela Zinsberger of going down three times to force a tactical
03:19 timeout during the game.
03:20 So the question is, is this cheating?
03:23 Now, the rules of the game state that when a player is injured, they must leave the field
03:26 of play, and that rule was introduced to effectively stop players feigning an injury to time waste.
03:31 It means that the game can continue without them, and if you do have to be treated on
03:34 the field, you still have to be removed before you can re-enter it.
03:37 But the exemption to this rule is if you are a goalkeeper, because you can't just take
03:40 the goalkeeper off and continue with the game, because that would be really silly.
03:43 So when one of them is injured or needs some kind of treatment, the game is forced to effectively
03:47 completely stop.
03:48 Which is of course allowing these team talks to happen, and you could argue, giving the
03:52 team doing it an advantage.
03:54 So what the game's governing bodies are going to have to do is look at whether or not that
03:57 advantage is an unfair one, and if it is, how best to deal with it.
04:00 Because it's all well and good just to say it's unsporting behaviour, or it's time wasting
04:04 and give a yellow card for doing it, but how do you prove either way if it's genuine?
04:09 And even if it is a bit shady, it's not like the advantage it provides is one that was
04:12 hitherto unimaginable before goalkeepers started pretending they had a slightly sore leg, like
04:17 timeouts are a thing that exist in plenty of other sports.
04:20 So it might well be that the only way to stop teams attempting to force a timeout would
04:24 be to actually give them a timeout.
04:27 I don't know how I feel about that.
04:28 Like what are the three things American sports have that British sports don't?
04:32 Well, one, really annoying picture in picture advertising.
04:34 Two, the losers.
04:35 My name's Tony McBaldi, co-owner, founder and CEO of Tony Mac's Whackin' Snack Shack.
04:39 Come on Harry, we got some gooey, all-American goodness for you.
04:43 We got fries, we got burgers, we got pickup trucks.
04:46 All for the low, low, low price of $1.95.
04:49 And three, timeouts.
04:51 So the question for you all today is the act of a goalkeeper feigning an injury or just
04:55 having some other kind of problem to force a break in play, allowing the manager to reorganise
05:01 his tactics in some kind of quasi-timeout, is that cheating?
05:05 Should it be banned?
05:06 And if so, how would you ban it?
05:09 Follow that good stuff in the comments below and of course don't forget to like, share
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05:13 Welcome to the 442 YouTube channel.
05:14 I can't even remember if I said my own name at the start but it's Adam Cleary by the way.
05:16 You can get me on Twitter @adamcleary, C-L-E-A-R-Y.
05:19 The entire 442 social spectrum is @442.
05:22 And until next time my friends, I will see you soon.
05:26 And to answer your other question, yes, yes this is my favourite top in the world.