On May 12, Lionel Messi hobbled to the sideline to get treatment after a hard foul. He assumed that, as has been the case over the rest of his career, the official would wave him back onto the field as soon as he was ready.
Instead, his return was delayed a full two minutes, during which time Inter Miami was awarded a free kick in a prime position for a left-footed dead ball ace. Even as he watched teammate Matias Rojas convert this chance, Apple’s broadcast cameras caught his moment of discontent.
“If they make rules like these…we are doing badly.”
GO DEEPER
Messi criticizes MLS anti-time-wasting rule and more from Inter Miami's win over Montreal
In that moment, Messi was experiencing one of two major changes to MLS rules, both of which are meant at least in part meant to combat timewasting, either through embellishment of injuries or by delaying one’s exit from the field during a substitution.
Messi’s criticism notwithstanding, the Professional Referees Organization (PRO) which manages officials in MLS and other U.S. competitions says it hasn’t heard much definitive feedback from MLS teams.
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“Obviously, there’s a little bit of negativity in the press when it impacts a certain high-profile player or a high-profile club,” said Mark Geiger, a former MLS and FIFA referee who is now PRO’s general manager. “There’s always going to be pushback. I think we need a little bit more data and a little bit more time to get a true sense of where this is going to be.”
But given the data, they feel the initial window has been a success.
The origins
The off-field treatment and a timed substitution rules may be new to MLS, but both have had a full season in practice in MLS Next Pro, the league’s developmental circuit. The impact of them was clear to Geiger.
“I think the biggest impact for me (was) when I watched the MLS Next Pro final last year,” Geiger told The Athletic. “From 70 minutes on is probably one of the most difficult parts of being a referee — especially in a game of that magnitude. It’s really difficult, because referees are not doctors, so you’re going to believe everything that the players are telling you (regarding injuries). There’s just not a lot of flow to the game. There’s a lot of pushback from the team that’s losing, or the one that has momentum going.
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How MLS Next Pro is cutting down on time-wasting
“You just didn’t see that in the final: it was free-flowing for the entire game. You really saw the benefit of these rules being put into place. That was just a really, really attractive game.”
The rules had earned the call-up to MLS proper, but their introduction was delayed until after the MLS officials’ work stoppage, during which time games were overseen by relatively inexperienced replacement officials.
Off-field treatment rule
These two time-wasting measures both underwent revisions before getting a look at the MLS level. For example, the off-field treatment rule (which states that a player may need to remain off the pitch “if the referee stops play due to a potential player injury,” with some defined exceptions) was abbreviated from a three-minute holding period to two minutes.
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The rule may seem to penalize a player for getting hurt – that was Messi’s complaint, and that of his manager Tata Martino after Inter Miami vs. Montreal. However, MLS senior vice president of sporting development Ali Curtis stressed it was a rule that could act as a check on harmful impulses from highly-competitive players.
“Sometimes if you suffer a physical or tough challenge, it may be helpful to step off the field and take a beat — or take two minutes, in our case,” said Curtis, who is a former MLS player and also oversaw the rule’s implementation in MLS Next Pro. “I remember even in my own experiences as a player, I have tried to play through injuries, an ankle, a torn knee — you try to fight through certain potential injuries. Taking a step off the field enhances our ability to treat players and keep them safe.”
However, a highly competitive player might also try and exploit these new rules to see if there’s an edge to be found. Geiger found out as much when doing PRO’s standard preseason meetings with MLS players and coaches, explaining changes to the rules and answering questions just as he had done previously in Next Pro.
“There’s a little bit of a difference between MLS proper and MLS Next Pro in terms of the types of players that you’re going to get,” Geiger said. “Many of the players in Next Pro are just trying to showcase themselves; they’re not necessarily trying to game the system or find ways around every rule. When we were doing the education to the (MLS) clubs, all of a sudden wheels were turning and trying to think of ways to get around it. I haven’t seen anything devious at all, anything that’s been really outside the box in terms of trying to gain the system or get around the rules.”
One MLS Season Pass broadcaster speculated during a game that some defenders may try to find the right strength of challenge to take an opponent off the pitch for two minutes, without being so hard that it warranted a card. In effect, manufacturing a “power play” situation.
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“I guess what I would say is, I hope not,” Curtis said of that hypothetical. “Even drawing from my own experience as a GM or as a player: players are going out there and competing, and it’s a physical game, but generally by and large, players aren’t going out there to injure other players. Maybe I’m an optimist, but I don’t think that players are going out there to try to injure players.”
Timed substitution rule
The timed substitution rule requires a player to exit the field within 10 seconds of the fourth official holding the board in the air. If a player isn’t going to their nearest sideline and exceeds an efficient exit window, their replacement will have to wait a full minute before entering the game.
When asked, Geiger said there isn’t any guidance on how fourth officials count to ten. He did joke that usually once a referee starts shouting “One! Two!,” you can see an exiting player working into more of a jog.
Still, Geiger says players will be given some benefit of the doubt.
“We’ve tried to take a common sense approach to a lot of these things,” Geiger said. “The one thing I didn’t want to have happen is to get an email from a club saying ‘it took 10.5 seconds for a particular player to get off, why were they not being held?’ The officials are doing this count in their head as soon as the board goes up, so what they’re trying to see is the player giving an effort. If they’re giving an effort to get off the field, and they had no other options — they’re going off at the nearest point — and it took 11 seconds, I don’t think you’ll see officials hold that player at midfield.”
Center officials also help players along, often with an arm outstretched toward the sideline like an usher in a dimly lit theater.
In 84 games since the new rules went into effect, MLS teams have combined to make 716 substitutions — just over 8.5 subs per game combined between two teams. From that sample, a player has only violated the 10-second guidance on eight occasions — not even 0.1 instances per contest.
The results and the future
While both Geiger and Curtis stopped short of casting a definitive judgment on the rules, the new initiatives appear to be making the intended first impression. Prior to the off-field treatment rule, there were 5.25 stoppages per game associated with potential injuries. In the six matchweeks since the rule was implemented, this figure has plummeted to 1.67 stoppages per game. Fouls, yellow cards, and red cards have all been issued at roughly similar rates across the timeframes.
This likely won’t be the last case where the guidelines outside of the Laws of the Game are modified after trials in MLS Next Pro. Curtis referred to one initiative that already has approval from the International Football Association Board (IFAB), the international body that administers the rules of soccer worldwide: a rule where only a team’s captain can interact with match officials to get clarity on a call. This would hope to cut down on the number of times where a referee is swarmed by incensed players begging for an overturned call or, at minimum, an acceptable explanation.
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“I would say there’s probably four or five other concepts that I think are interesting that we really need to explore,” Curtis added. “A lot of them have to deal with what I would say is not just time-wasting, but really effective match time. Those key areas of player health and safety, gamesmanship, technology, some of those key areas — we want to be a leader in the game and we want to be on the front foot.”
Ultimately, Curtis reiterated that these rules are made with the game’s best intentions in mind, both as an entertainment event and a way to keep players safe.
“There’s kind of this tagline that we’ve been talking about,” Curtis said, “that the game has been around for 100 years, but there’s so many other parts of the game that have evolved in terms of how it’s played, who plays it, who watches it, how we consume it. The game itself and the quality of play has changed over time.
“As part of that evolution, you kind of have this — not a domestic issue, but you kind of have this global issue where teams and players apply these tactics that delay games. You know, embellishing fouls, faking injuries, applying these types of game-delaying tactics in order to get a result. We think that that’s unfair for players, it’s unfair for coaches, it’s unfair for fans, for everyone that’s invested in the game. There’s not a perfect answer, but doing nothing cannot be the solution.”
(Photo: Steve Limentani/ISI Photos/Getty Images)