There is an epidemic among goalkeepers in the Premier League.
Going down injured is part and parcel of professional football – but with custodians picking up odd knocks and finding problems with their equipment, there’s something fishy going on exclusively between the sticks. Manchester City’s Ederson and Arsenal’s Aaron Ramsdale are masters of this art in particular.
So… why exactly are goalkeepers going down? What benefit is there to be had from them in particular feigning an injury?
This is why goalkeepers keep faking injuries
This week in the Champions League, Ederson went down against Bayern Munich to give his team a breather. Perhaps he got the idea from Ramsdale doing it against City. Nick Pope did it for Newcastle United against Fulham.
In each of these scenarios, the goalkeeper went down, received treatment – or did not, as the case may be – giving the rest of the team an opportunity to receive instructions from the manager.
As FFT’s Adam Clery notes in the video above, if a player goes down injured they have to leave the field of play. The game can continue with 21 players on the field – but the exception to this rule is the goalkeeper. If a keeper goes down, the game just… well, stops. Allowing for this tactical timeout.
So is it cheating? Should it be banned? And how do you even ban a timeout when you can’t tell whether it’s a real injury or not? Perhaps, in the strangest way possible, the only way to stop this kind of timeout from happening would be to give football…proper timeouts like American sports…
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