Former U.S. men’s national team midfielder Benny Feilhaber was watching a Brazilian Serie A game on television recently when it struck him how frustrating the late stages of the game were for viewers.
Botafogo, the Brazilian-born Feilhaber’s lifelong favorite team, currently sits atop the table and was protecting a one-goal lead over América Mineiro. As América started to seize momentum, the game turned into what it often does in those situations: the art of time-wasting.
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“For me, this is a fact: I think we have a problem in soccer today with time wasting,” Feilhaber said. “It happens everywhere. We see it all over, in MLS, everywhere. People laying down or killing clock because they know you don’t get all the time back or they can impact the rhythm of the other team or momentum. If you want to make it more entertaining you have to fix it and find a solution.”
The frustration for Feilhaber was amplified, in part, because he knows the problem can be addressed. As coach of MLS Next Pro’s Sporting Kansas City II, Feilhaber saw the effectiveness of the league’s off-field treatment rule, which was implemented last summer. The rule says that “if the referee stops play due to a potential player injury, the player may be required to leave the field of play for three minutes.”
The rule has “exceptions” built in for issues like head injuries, bleeding, cardiac or serious injury incidents, or red- or yellow-card inducing tackles, but the aim is simple: stop time-wasting tactics.
The results after one and a half seasons of implementation were clear, and eye-opening: an 80% reduction in extended stoppages due to on-field treatment.
Prior to implementation of the rule, players went down due to potential injury for 15-plus seconds an average of six times per MLS Next Pro game, including injuries that would have fallen into line with the exceptions to the rule. With the off-field treatment rule in place, that number was reduced to 1.21 incidents per game — 1.01 per game were “exceptions” to the rule (injuries that required stoppage but didn’t trigger the three-minute waiting period) and just 0.20 per game were times the player had to remain off the field for three minutes.
For those involved in the game, the difference was both noticeable and not. The game itself didn’t seem to be disrupted much by the rule, but the game-flow was distinctly better. While the league is working with a data provider to measure effective play time this season, several people who coached or worked in the league said to the naked eye the change was obvious.
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“Based on the stats and what I’ve seen, yes, I 100 percent believe there has been a positive effect on the game with these rules,” Feilhaber said. “All in all, in our league I’ve seen a considerable improvement in terms of time wasting. There just really isn’t time wasting.”
Austin FC II beat Columbus Crew 2 in the MLS Next Pro championship game. The league was formed as a way to try to increase development opportunities for young players and to expand MLS’ footprint in the space as it formed MLS Next, its youth academy division. But the league’s ability to serve as a sort of guinea pig for rule changes has proved extremely valuable.
League leadership has been deliberate in their approach to testing new rule changes and competition structures, and they’ve found some successes — the off-field treatment rule and timed substitution rule, which gives subs just 10 seconds to leave the field of play, are two examples — that could contribute to more effective play time, which is a top objective for leagues around the world.
The timed substitution rule requires that if a player does not exit the field within those 10 seconds, then the player that is awaiting entry must wait until the first stoppage following a 60-second holding period. In more than 3,150 substitutions this season, there were just 10 violations. In the playoffs, there were zero. It effectively eliminated players using substitutions to waste time.
Ali Curtis, the senior vice president of competition and operations for MLS Next Pro, led the development of these rule changes. Curtis, a former sporting director at both New York Red Bulls and Toronto FC, said it was a months-long process involving stakeholders across the league.
“We knew we wanted to be really progressive as it pertains to on-field innovation,” Curtis said. “But at the same time we didn’t want to change the game, we wanted to evolve it.”
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Representatives from 11 different MLS Next Pro clubs engaged in the conversations as part of a committee that eventually presented the rule changes. Curtis also spoke with national team coaches, FIFA officials and referee officials, including both former PRO executive Howard Webb, who departed for the Premier League last summer, and current PRO general manager Mark Geiger. Notably, the Premier League instituted a similar “on-field treatment” rule this season, though players are required to stay out for only 30 seconds rather than three minutes.
The meetings were important in that they had to look for some of the unintended consequences a new rule may create. For example, there was a concern that the on-field treatment rule might lead to players fouling opponents hard late in games in which they are trailing in order to try to potentially get a man advantage if that player has to stay down for an extended period of time. That, in part, led to an exception to the rule for yellow- or red-card fouls.
“I’ve been in a lot of meeting rooms at all different levels, these conversations involving new rules have been the most challenging I have ever experienced,” Curtis said. “There is an emotion that goes along with breaking tradition, sometimes it takes time. It’s been tricky in that respect, getting people to understand how to evolve and what are the right steps to do that. We don’t want to propose rules for the sake of change. We want to be thoughtful and we want them to be impactful.”
Coaches, players and executives around the league saw an almost immediate change in behavior. Players were bouncing up quicker, or going off the field themselves to receive treatment. (If a player leaves the field on his own to receive treatment, he can return at the referee’s discretion, without a three-minute waiting period.)
Columbus Crew 2 general manager Corey Wray recalled one incident where a Columbus player had to serve the three-minute penalty. Wray asked the player after the game what happened. The player said he was cramping, but was near the middle of the field. He thought about rolling off the entire field, but opted just to stay down.
As funny as the image of a player rolling off the field may be, the incident showed that the rule was successful in changing how a player thought about an injury — ’How can I get up and off the field and not slow the game down?’ — but also that there are still things that need to be tinkered with and addressed within the rule, a natural part of the process.
“Each week we were asking, ‘What’s the feedback?’ We were talking to (stakeholders), and the biggest concerns were on the medical and performance side. Are we looking after players and what’s good for them,” Wray said. “That’s where the referees are a big factor, asking, ‘Are you hurt?’ and ‘Can I help you?’ If you are injured, there are exceptions for that. That keeps the players safe. Outside of that, guys have to figure if it’s bad enough to stay down or not. That thought process was what we were trying to influence. Are you staying down to influence the situation or are you staying down because you can’t move off?”
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The rule changes have proven so successful, there is a chance we could see them in MLS next season. That, though, will require more approval through the league’s product strategy committee and approval from the board of governors. Those conversations, as Curtis said, aren’t easy. Still, the data is compelling, and that could mean change that started in MLS Next Pro finds its way to bigger leagues soon.
“At the end of the day, we want to see more soccer,” Curtis said. “And that’s been something that’s been a real, real bright spot.”
(Photo: Andrew Katsampes/ISI Photos/Getty Images)