Lionel Messi has been kicked and punched, twisted and tackled, bruised and battered thousands of times throughout his career, and almost every time, after grimacing and squirming, and then walking off the field, the rules of football They have enthusiastically welcomed the battle.
He has been treated by trainers in Spain and South America. He has been limping around on four different continents. When he is ready, the referees have signaled him to return to the field of play, according to standard protocol.
But on Saturday night in Montreal, after being fouled, Messi limped right into the mouth of a Innovative new rule in Major League Soccer.
That kept him sidelined for the next two minutes, and as he waited, watching his Inter Miami team play 10-on-11, he turned toward a camera and microphone on the field, visibly frustrated. “With these kinds of rules,” he said. saying In Spanish, more or less, “we are going in the wrong direction.”
However, the standard is already serving its intended purpose.
MLS came up with it because, for decades, in hundreds of leagues around the world, players have been abusing standard protocol to waste time. They have exaggerated or faked injuries when they won by one or two goals. They have devoured precious minutes by devious means, without repercussions. Apparently, they were one of the reasons why the average MLS match featured more than five injury-related stoppages lasting longer than 15 seconds, although only 8% of those stoppages resulted in a substitution.
The league’s response: the so-called “off-field treatment rule,” which, with some exceptions, states that “if… (a) player remains on the ground for more than 15 seconds and medical personnel enter the field of play , the player may be required to leave the field of play for two minutes.”
The initial result: fewer than two arrests per game since the rule was implemented on April 20: 1.77 during the first three weeks, down from 5.25 previously, according to league data.
The data, however, did not stop an eruption of speeches and criticism once Messi expressed his opinion. Some of the criticism echoed earlier concerns expressed by coaches. Saturday’s incident appeared to highlight an oversight in rule-making and an unfortunate side effect.
“The fouled team was punished,” Miami head coach Tata Martino said after the game. “With these new rule changes, there are situations that need to be reviewed.”
Off-field treatment rule works as intended
The rules first took shape in 2022, when an MLS “on-field innovation committee” took aim at the bane of soccer purists, a waste of time. After extensive consultations (with referees and owners, athletic directors and “medical people”), league officials refined two semi-revolutionary ideas to cure the disease.
One rule targeted substitutions: a player must leave the field within 10 seconds when substituted, or his replacement will have to wait 60 seconds to enter.
The other focused on injury simulation, and was much more complicated.
“The goal,” MLS executive Ali Curtis said of both, was “to reduce avoidable game delays and reduce cheating.” But the off-field treatment rule required a lot of nuance, because real injuries are a very real part of football and are often indistinguishable from fake ones.
That is why they incorporated certain exceptions, even for serious medical events. They decided to treat the brain and head injuries separately. They chose to exempt any fouled player who received a yellow or red card. They also exempted the goalkeepers.
In all of those cases, a player could re-enter once he or she is medically cleared.
But otherwise, he would have to fight through the pain or call an athletic trainer and miss at least two minutes.
MLS tested the rules in its reserve league, MLS Next Pro, in 2022 and 2023, and “I felt very, very good about the (resulting) data,” Curtis said. According to that data, injury stoppages lasting more than 15 seconds fell from 6.0 per game without the rule in 2022 to 1.22 in 2023.
And of those 1.22, 1.04 were exceptions. Only 0.17 arrests per game met the criteria for the “off-field treatment rule,” meaning players were only forced to sit for two minutes about once every six games. In MLS, over three weeks, the equivalent rate was very similar: 0.16.
And the decrease in stoppages, it seems, is explained, at least in part, by less simulation. Before the rule, in MLS Next Pro, 8% of the stops in question led to a substitution. Once most of those stoppages ended, the replacement rate increased to 38%.
However, concerns remain. The rule gives players a clear incentive to play through pain, to avoid something resembling a hockey-style two-minute power play. You can also reward performers.
Curtis, speaking to reporters before the season, acknowledged those potential side effects. “One of the concerns we talked about was whether or not this would make the game more brutal,” he said. “Would a team try to deliberately hurt an opponent to gain an advantage that would allow them to be one man down?”
His response then was the exception for fouls with yellow and red cards.
Part of the league’s answer now (implicitly, in data sent to Yahoo Sports on Sunday) is that foul and yellow card rates were actually lower in the first three weeks under the new rule than they were during the first nine weeks. of the season, while for red cards the rates were flat. (Part of the slight drop, from 25.88 fouls to 24.07 and 4.61 yellows to 4.38, could be due to the change of replacement referees to the league’s regular teams.)
MLS willing to innovate and listen
Concerns, however, arose again when Messi collapsed on Saturday night and writhed in pain. Montreal’s George Campbell had banged his leg in the 40th minute. Messi rolled twice and then grabbed his knee, which had nearly hyperextended. He put his forearm to his forehead. He hid his eyes and the agony from him. He threw his head back and grimaced at the sky. He was clearly hurt, not faking it.
But referee Drew Fischer had not shown Campbell the yellow card.
So when Messi finally stood up and reached the bench, an assistant referee showed two fingers to confirm: MessiEssentially, he would be the one penalized.
This is an unintentional and unseemly consequence of the rule. But it probably won’t deter MLS, because this isn’t a rule meant to please the players; It is designed to accommodate fans and make games more visible. It’s a compensation.
It is also malleable. “Of course, if there is an unintended consequence that we could not foresee and that had the perverse effect of jeopardizing the health and safety of the players, for example, we have to look at that immediately,” the MLS executive said. Nelson Rodríguez before the season.
But they probably wouldn’t eliminate the rule. A first step, sometime this year or next, could be an adjustment or change. A simple amendment, for example, could have avoided the Messi scenario. No player in a regular season game (with the possible exception of the last day of the season) would try to waste time by losing. So why should a team that is down two goals, as Miami was on Saturday, be subject to the rule? Wouldn’t this be another sensible, if imperfect, exemption?
Surely that will be considered. In general, the league’s leaders have expressed their willingness to innovate and change, and to listen.
“It’s really about thinking about the feedback we get, not just from the fans, but from the players, from the coaches, from what’s happening in the sports landscape,” Curtis said. “We try to stay connected with all parts of the ecosystem, fans being one of them, so that we can continue to analyze our game and look for solutions.”
