Culture
Bellingham's non-goal shows us football’s full-time law needs to change
It is the final seconds of the NBA Finals. The clock hits 0.0 in a one-point game, but play continues for a few seconds because the Golden State Warriors are driving towards the rim.
The fight at Madison Square Garden is going the distance. The final bell goes in the 12th round, but the referee doesn’t stop Oleksandr Usyk’s advance, with the Ukrainian boxer close to a knockout.
There is one lap left in the Formula One World Championship and in a winner-takes-all situation, the race director refuses to drop the chequered flag because second-place is catching the leader. Actually, after the controversial end to the 2021 season, maybe that is not the best example.
Nevertheless, the point still stands. The circumstances above are ridiculous — every major sport has a clear ending, whether it’s an expired game clock, the final pitch, match point. They are objective, not subjective.
Football is an exception and the final moments of Real Madrid’s 2-2 draw at Valencia on Saturday night exposed its limitations.
This is what transpired.
Bellingham and other players surround the referee after the decision (Jose Hernandez/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Seven minutes of stoppage time came up on the fourth official’s board. After that, there was a two-minute delay when a penalty initially awarded against Real was overturned by the VAR. The visiting side’s hackles were up on an emotional night — winger Vinicius Junior had earlier scored two goals at a stadium where he was subject to racist abuse the previous season.
The delays meant the match continued into its 99th minute and as Luka Modric approached to take a Madrid corner, referee Jesus Gil Manzano signalled that this would be the match’s final play.
Valencia cleared — but only to the edge of the box. As Madrid winger Brahim Diaz prepared to cross the ball back in, Gil Manzano blew his whistle. Game over.
Less than a second later, Diaz delivered his cross. The referee’s whistle had not yet registered with the players awaiting it. Jude Bellingham, who has scored 16 La Liga goals this season, headed in. Wheeling away in celebration, he and Madrid thought this was the winner, another special moment in his spectacular debut season.
Gil Manzano was resolute. No goal. Bellingham rushed the referee alongside captain Dani Carvajal, Vinicius Jr, Joselu, Andriy Lunin, and Antonio Rudiger.
“It’s a f*****g goal,” Bellingham shouted at Gil Manzano — and was sent off. Speaking post-match, Carlo Ancelotti backed up his player.
“Bellingham did not insult the referee, he said in English, ‘It’s a f*****g goal’, which is what we all thought,” the Madrid manager said. “He came close to the referee, but given what had happened, that was pretty normal.”
Madrid’s official website called it an “unprecedented refereeing decision” — but by the letter of the law, they had no case. Gil Manzano had played enough stoppage time and signalled his intention to end the game and the final whistle means the game is over. No ifs, buts, or maybes.
The anger came from one of football’s unwritten laws — that when a team is attacking, the final whistle should not be blown.
“The ball is in the air — what the f*** is that?” Bellingham appeared to say during his protestations. From rewatching, the first blast of Gil Manzano’s whistle came before the ball was delivered — with the second and third occurring with the ball in the air, but before Bellingham headed it. Only the first whistle is needed to stop the game.
Football’s rulebook is vague about exactly when a referee should blow their whistle. According to the International Football Association Board (IFAB), the sport’s lawmakers, the referee “acts as the timekeeper”, “the additional time may be increased by the referee, but not reduced”, and “the allowance for time lost is at the discretion of the referee”.
IFAB Law 5.2 adds: “The referee may not change a restart decision on realising that it is incorrect if the referee has signalled the end of the first or second half.”
This wooliness has led to a subjective system. The game has developed in such a way that the expectation is that a half should not end if one team is on the attack, but without this being codified, referees can interpret this differently — if they recognise it at all.
What constitutes being on the attack? Being about to shoot or cross? What if there is a transition opportunity? What if a player has a clear run at goal from behind halfway? Is 60 seconds of patient build-up from around the edge of the box, a la Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City, one ongoing attack?
Every other element of football is tightly regulated. IFAB’s Laws of the Game is a 230-page-long document. Six of those pages, including diagrams, are devoted to what constitutes handball. Why does one of its most important elements — when a game is over — scarcely merit a mention?
After posting about this on X, formerly Twitter, some replied to say the law was clear — the game is over when the whistle blows. Why the widespread anger then? Others responded by saying this was only an issue because it happened to Bellingham and Real Madrid — but this is not the first time it has happened. It was only a matter of time before it occurred again in a high-stakes, high-profile match.
Going right back to the 1978 World Cup, Welsh referee Clive Thomas blew for full time with a Brazil corner in the air during a group stage match against Sweden — disallowing a Zico header that would have given Brazil a 2-1 win. The decision meant they only finished second in their group, placing them in a harder pool in the second round, from which they failed to qualify for the final.
In January 2021, Paul Tierney blew for half-time a handful of seconds before the allotted one minute of stoppage time was up. Liverpool, playing Manchester United in a crucial Premier League match, had the ball behind halfway, but Sadio Mane appeared to be through on goal. He would not have been able to put the ball into the net before the clock struck 46 minutes.
One month later, Craig Pawson was refereeing Manchester United’s trip to West Bromwich Albion. With the score 1-1 and the clock at 47.07 after two minutes of stoppage time, United broke from their own half — with four attackers against only one West Brom defender. Pawson blew with the ball still 70 yards from the opposition goal and was surrounded by irate United players.
Most egregiously, in November 2017, Spanish second-division side Ponferradina thought they had a late winner to lift them clear of the relegation zone, but referee Alvaro Lopez Parra blew as Andy Rodriguez chipped the ball over the opposition goalkeeper.
Gim. Segoviana – Ponferradina (0-0): gol anulado a la Ponfe en la última jugada. El balón entra mientras suena el pitido final (vía @rtvcyl) pic.twitter.com/zgUlU7z9E8
— El Partidazo de COPE (@partidazocope) November 2, 2017
The laws allow for subconscious bias, the possibility of home teams or favourites being given more chances, and for inconsistency, with referees interpreting what constitutes an attack differently.
Visit refereeing forums and the same issues arise. Dozens of grassroots officials have stories of being surrounded after blowing for full time. Their decision is final, but subjective. People disagree.
“It’s less aggro, believe me, to blow at a neutral situation,” wrote one referee, explaining one controversial incident. “But it isn’t necessarily always the correct thing to do.”
It does not need to be this way.
IFAB’s annual conference took place last week in Scotland. There, football’s lawmakers discussed permanent and temporary concussion substitutes, accidental handballs, and encroachment during penalties. What else might they have discussed had full time been on the agenda?
Football has a few challenges. Because of further stoppages after the 90th minute — injuries, substitutions, celebrations, time-wasting — referees cannot simply blow up the second that the clock hits the end of the allotted stoppage time.
If football had a system where the clock stopped when the ball was out of play, matches would swell to an unprecedented length — the typical ball-in-play time in the Premier League is roughly around 55 minutes.
Under the current system, however, teams complain if the whistle is blown while they are on the attack. Amid this indistinctness, no one is happy.
One simple tweak could help. During stoppage time, the referee could switch to a stopped-clock system and blow up exactly on the minute. For example, if a team scores after the referee has signalled there would be four minutes of stoppage time, the referee could stop time, before restarting when the ball is in play, and blow up exactly on 94.00. Professional stadiums all have clocks displaying the exact time, so players can remain aware.
It gives the law objectivity, allows for post-90th-minute stoppages and, by only being implemented in stoppage time, means games will not take over two hours to complete. It is not a complete novelty to the sport — futsal already has a designated timekeeper and a strict full-time whistle.
Bellingham’s ‘goal’ should not have stood, but the vagueness and limitations of football’s laws put referees in a difficult position. The game is already hard enough to control. This is not a case of a rule being changed — but of basic clarity being introduced.
(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Dan Goldfarb)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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