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)
Where do you turn when you need advice? A chatbot? A life coach? A wise and trusted friend?
How about a poet? Poets may not be famous for making the best life choices, but because they subject the mess of human existence to the discipline of language, they can be as helpful as any therapist or mentor.
Good poets know the rules and when to break them, which is something they can teach the rest of us.
To wit:
Giving advice is a peculiar literary undertaking. It flourishes in certain popular genres — graduation speeches, newspaper columns, country and western songs and poems like this one — but what, in these contexts, is it really for?
I’m thinking of situations when you don’t urgently need help but nonetheless enjoy reading answers to questions you may not have thought to ask. What interests you isn’t the content of the advice — you could get all the life hacks you want from A.I. — so much as the voice of the person dispensing it.
Wendy Cope is an English poet, born in 1945, who has been a fixture of her country’s literary scene since the 1980s. More recently, her short, buoyant poem “The Orange” has been widely memed online, bringing her to the attention of new readers beyond Britain.
Cope favors rhyme, meter, brisk jokes and tart aperçus. She addresses romance, friendship and the petty absurdities of modern life with disarming good humor. The last line of “The Orange” is “I love you. I’m glad I exist.” Somehow she makes it the opposite of cringe.
This isn’t the kind of poetry you would describe as “confessional.” And yet …
Question 1/7
Stop, if the car is going “clunk”
Or if the sun has made you blind.
Don’t answer e–mails when you’re drunk.
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.Want to learn this poem by heart? We’ll help.
Fill in the missing words below. You can always refer to the reading by A.O. Scott and full
text above.Let’s start with the first stanza.
A strong sense of place can deeply influence a story, and in some cases, the setting can even feel like a character itself. This week’s literary geography quiz highlights places where authors were born (or lived) that later became locations in their books. To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. At the end of the quiz, you’ll find links to the works if you’d like to do further reading.
AMERICA, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries, by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
For those of us in the national memory-keeping business, anniversaries hold near-totemic power. Satisfyingly round units of time, ideally bearing fancy, Latin-derived names, serve as the overburdened pegs on which to hang think pieces and museum exhibits, revisionist documentaries and maudlin public ceremonies. The arbitrary nature of such occasions is precisely what gives them their charge, inviting us to set aside complacency and submit to a comprehensive check-in.
In his new book, “America, U.S.A.,” Eddie S. Glaude Jr. presents an intriguing variation on the genre, seeing the country’s 250th birthday as an anniversary of anniversaries: 50 years since the malaise-ridden, schlock-heavy Bicentennial. A century since the subdued Prohibition-era Sesquicentennial. A century and a half since telegraphed reports of George Armstrong Custer’s defeat by the Lakota and Cheyenne at Little Bighorn rudely interrupted the Gilded Age Republic’s 100th birthday party.
If an anniversary offers a snapshot of a moment, the core of Glaude’s book is an old-timey photo album, a collection of notable episodes from earlier national reckonings, long-ago glances in the mirror. An estimable scholar of Black history, politics and religion at Princeton — best known for “Begin Again,” his 2020 meditation on James Baldwin’s relevance for our times — Glaude focuses, as his subtitle puts it, on “how race shadows the nation’s anniversaries.”
Such celebrations, he contends, have never really been the moments for honest self-reflection they are often advertised to be. Instead, the nation usually shatters the mirror, refusing to accept what it prefers not to see. “American anniversaries are often moments to turn a blind eye to the evils of the past and the present,” Glaude writes, “to suppress the fact of America’s divided soul.”
It’s a clever concept, and, needless to say, perfectly timed. Last year, Glaude notes, the Trump administration executed a hostile takeover of the government’s studiously bipartisan 250th anniversary planning. It is now preparing a program that is certain to conceal more than it reveals about the country ostensibly being celebrated.
Glaude, in no mood for celebration, argues that such omissions and evasions also defined commemorations in the past. In 1875, Frederick Douglass predicted “one grand Centennial hosannah of peace and good will to all the white race of this country.” He was right: The nation reached 100 years old at a crucial moment in the post-Civil War fight over racial equality, with white Northerners ready to give up on Southern Reconstruction. The occasion would help the once-warring sections to reunite around a shared commitment to white supremacy. On May 10, 1876, at the opening of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the police tried to bar Douglass from the grandstand, until a white politician vouched for him.
The 150th anniversary came soon after a resurgent Ku Klux Klan successfully pushed for a restrictive immigration law aimed at keeping America a “Nordic” nation. At the lavishly funded, lightly attended celebrations in Philadelphia, Black veterans of World War I were excluded from marching in the opening parade. A writer with The Associated Negro Press wondered “what was in the breast of those black men who fought to make America safe for Democracy and on Monday stood on the sidelines, forgotten, as the Nordic strode by in all his vain pride.”
By 1976, when the nation marked its Bicentennial, the violence of the ’60s had destroyed any semblance of consensus. Vietnam and Watergate had eroded trust in the government. The commission initially tasked with organizing the anniversary was disbanded amid reports of corruption. Corporations filled the vacuum, Glaude explains, with “star-spangled whoopee cushions; patriotic toilet seats; Liberty hamburgers; red, white and blue beer cans.” The author, around 8 years old at the time, dimly remembers donning a pair of tricolor trousers.
A half-century later, Glaude is refreshingly honest about the depths of his despair. “I do not love America, and never have, especially now,” he writes in one of the more startling opening sentences I’ve read in some time. He dismisses this year’s Semiquincentennial as reaching back “to a storybook America that requires either the banishment of Black people from view or the reduction of our role in the country’s history, so as to affirm America’s ongoing quest to be a more perfect union.”
Undoubtedly true. But Trump doesn’t own the country, at least not yet, nor the 250th anniversary of one of the most radically liberatory and confusingly contradictory events in world history — an inspiration, as Glaude shows, even to critical observers of the American experiment, like Douglass. Far from the revanchist MAGA-palooza in Washington, I suspect this summer’s unasked-for invitation to national soul-searching may surprise us yet.
Despite his despair, Glaude concludes that “the past still offers resources for us to freedom-dream.” So, too, does this book.
AMERICA, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries | By Eddie S. Glaude Jr. | Crown | 270 pp. | $31
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