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.
00:07At some point in the first half of a big game, usually when their team are up against it,
00:11goalkeepers are picking up a small injury or a problem with their equipment that forces
00:15a small break in play.
00:17But not before the manager is able to gather some or all of his players together in a little
00:21huddle and just tweak how they're doing things on the pitch.
00:23What a happy coincidence for all involved.
00:25Or is it?
00:26Yes, my friends, welcome to the brave new world of the tactical timeout.
00:34Now in the recent Champions League quarterfinal second leg clash between Manchester City and
00:37Bayern Munich, Ederson stopped play for around 30 seconds to a minute.
00:41Immediately following a period of Bayern possession and them just having narrowly missed a chance,
00:45there was something wrong with his boots so he couldn't take the goal kick.
00:47So he had to just sort that out.
00:49And while he did so, Pep Guardiola summoned Bernardo Silva over, gestured to him that
00:53the ball needed to go onto the left hand side more than it was on the right hand side.
00:56And mere minutes later, Manchester City get a penalty from that exact part of the pitch.
01:01But the thing is, Ederson isn't the only goalkeeper doing things like this this season.
01:04An entire host of them across the Premier League and across Europe have become very,
01:08very good at this.
01:09The undeniable masters of it at the moment are Nicasia United's Nick Pope and Arsenal's
01:13Aaron Ramsdale, the latter of which used it to simply beautiful effect in their top of
01:17the table clash against City.
01:19Now in that game, Arsenal started fairly brightly.
01:20They had more of the ball, they were creating chances, but Manchester City very quickly
01:24got a handle on the situation and began turning the screw.
01:26They found Erling Haaland unmarked at the back post and were it for any Manchester City
01:30player gambling on his cutback, they would have gone 1-0 up.
01:34Ramsdale immediately looks to the bench, drops to the floor and just for good measure throws
01:38off both of his boots in the process.
01:40The camera cuts to the touchline, presumably about to catch Arteta sending the physio on
01:44or calling back to the substitute goalkeeper, looking quite panicked at the fact his goalkeeper
01:47might be injured.
01:48But instead, it doesn't find that.
01:50It finds the entire Arsenal team in a huddle on the touchline.
01:54The physio is not summoned and the substitute does not warm up and a minute later Ramsdale
01:58is back on his feet, ready to go and up until the point Manchester City get the first goal,
02:03Arsenal look pretty good.
02:04Same again, Newcastle vs Fulham earlier in the season, the Magpies haven't quite got
02:07a handle on the game.
02:09They win a corner but as soon as the ball is turned over, oh no, Nick Pope goes to ground.
02:13The 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.
02:21The physio is summoned this time and he goes to have a quick look to see if everything's
02:24okay with Nick Pope, when Eddie Howe takes the opportunity to give his team a quick talking
02:28to.
02:29And you're not going to believe this, Nick Pope was absolutely fine, back on his feet
02:32within a minute and the game resumed.
02:33So if you somehow haven't quite grasped the concept of my tone right now, it's that there's
02:37nothing wrong with Edison's boot or Ramsdale's foot or Pope's body in general.
02:42It's that goalkeepers are told to go down in these moments, either from the bench or
02:45pre-game, in order to buy their team a timeout.
02:49And these seem to exclusively take place in the first half of games because, as anybody
02:53who watches football will tell you, referees seem to use a different watch for the first
02:5745, don't they?
02:58Someone could be down for an hour, they would still just stick up two minutes at the end.
03:01You try that sort of nonsense in the second half, you're probably going to get every single
03:04second added on, but do it in the first and nobody gives a shit.
03:08In fact, as recently as March of this year, Chelsea's women's manager Emma Hayes even
03:11spoke out about this after their side lost 3-1 in the Conte Cup final.
03:15She accused Arsenal goalkeeper Manuela Zinsberger of going down three times to force a tactical
03:19timeout during the game.
03:21So the question is, is this cheating?
03:24The rules of the game state that when a player is injured, they must leave the field of play,
03:27and that rule was introduced to effectively stop players feigning an injury to time waste.
03:31It means that the game can continue without them, and if you do have to be treated on
03:34the field, you still have to be removed before you can re-enter it.
03:37But the exemption to this rule is if you are a goalkeeper, because you can't just take
03:41the 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.
03:49Which is of course allowing these team talks to happen, and you could argue, giving the
03:52team doing it an advantage.
03:54So what the game's governing bodies are going to have to do is look at whether or
03:57not that advantage is an unfair one, and if it is, how best to deal with it.
04:01Because it's all well and good just to say it's unsporting behaviour, or it's time
04:04wasting and give a yellow card for doing it, but how do you prove either way if it's
04:09genuine?
04:10And even if it is a bit shady, it's not like the advantage it provides is one that
04:12was hitherto unimaginable before goalkeepers started pretending they had a slightly sore
04:17leg.
04:18Like timeouts are a thing that exist in plenty of other sports.
04:20So it might well be that the only way to stop teams attempting to force a timeout, would
04:24be to actually give them a timeout.
04:27I don't know how I feel about that.
04:29Like what are the three things American sports have that British sports don't?
04:32Well, one, really annoying picture in picture advertising.
04:35Two-
04:36And three, timeouts.
04:51So the question for you all today, is the act of a goalkeeper feigning an injury or
04:55just having some other kind of problem to force a break in play, allowing the manager
05:00to reorganise his tactics in some kind of quasi-timeout, is that cheating?
05:06Should it be banned?
05:07And 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
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05:13Welcome to the 442 YouTube channel.
05:14I can't even remember if I said my own name at the start, but it's Adam Cleary, by the
05:17way.
05:18You can get me on Twitter at adamcleary, C-L-E-A-R-Y.
05:19The entire 442 social spectrum is at 442, and until next time, my friends, I will see
05:25you soon.
05:26And to answer your other question, yes, yes, this is my favourite top in the world.
05:29Goodbye!