What Are Tactical Timeouts In Football?
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.