Goalkeepers are the kings of time-wasting – here we reveal their methods

Has there ever been a starker case of ‘live by the dark arts, die by the dark arts’ than Emi Martinez?

Martinez arguably won the World Cup for Argentina with his penalty shootout antics, getting into the heads of a string of Frenchmen and at least contributing to them missing two spot kicks.

But then, against Arsenal, he scored a slapstick own goal during injury time that was added on thanks to his time-wasting, then suffered the ultimate goalkeeping indignity of chasing forlornly back as the opposition scored into a net that was left empty by him going rogue at an attacking corner.

Weighing the two against each other, he’ll probably take it. Even if you include his manager telling him off like a naughty child who’d just smashed a lamp. But it was a prime example of when time-wasting can backfire.

Time-wasting is the most basic of the ‘dark arts’, straight from page one of the handbook.

And when it comes to time-wasting, goalkeepers are best placed to engage in it. Outfielders can dither over free kicks or shuffle off when substituted or take the ball into the corner, but no other single player has as many opportunities to run down the clock as goalkeepers.

So it’s not a huge surprise that keepers dominate the ranks of players who have been booked for time-wasting. In fact, over the past 10 seasons (2022-23 included), three players have been booked eight times for this grave offence, and they’re all goalkeepers. Ben Foster is one. Jordan Pickford is another.

The other, of course, is our hero Martinez, who has notched up those eight cautions despite this only being his third full season as a top-flight starter.

Scroll down the list a bit further and you’ll find Vicente Guaita, Nick Pope and Ederson on seven, Alex McCarthy with six and Artur Boruc, Adrian and Dean Henderson with five. The only outfielders who can match those numbers are Ryan Bertrand (seven) and Jose Holebas (five).

Some of those cautions can be put down to a clampdown on time-wasting in recent seasons. Last summer, PGMOL advised referees to take a ‘proactive’ approach to delayed restarts, the idea being to maximise the time the ball was in play and improve the flow of games. At the time of writing, there have been 43 yellow cards issued for time-wasting this season, roughly on track to beat last season’s total of 70.

Time-wasting remains an integral part of a goalkeeper’s arsenal and there are some basic tactics, as The Athletic analyst and former ’keeper Matt Pyzdrowski explains.

“Late in the game, I’d often trap the ball with my feet and take it to the corner of my box, pretend to pick it up, then do that over and over until the attacker would press me.

“On goal kicks, I would gingerly walk to the ball, throw it to the top of the six-yard box, then take a few sips of water from my water bottle. On the occasions when the ball kids would throw the balls to me, sometimes I’d let the ball go through my hands and clumsily fumble it as I tried to pick it up. Or, I’d pretend I didn’t see them and walk to the other side of the goal.

“On crosses late in the game, I’d often claim the ball and then lay on the ground and waste a few seconds that way.”

You could also add deliberately taking a goal kick on the opposite side of the six-yard box; placing it with the care one would take when planting an especially delicate flower; and taking as long as possible to bash the mud from between the studs of their boots.

The most basic approach is to simply hold the ball in your hands for as long as you can get away with, something theoretically prohibited under the six-second rule. But it’s rarely strictly enforced, as referees have been instructed to take a “pragmatic” approach to the rule, only penalising if it is “clearly excessive”.

There are some more advanced tactics, too.

“The best one was when I took a goal kick,” says former West Ham goalkeeper Jimmy Walker. “And (the opposition fans) would give it the, ‘Ooooooooohhhhhh… You’re shit, AHHHHHH’. I would get to just before kicking it and then stop. I’d set it back up. The ref would be telling me to hurry up, I’d say, ‘Yeah, sorry ref’, then eventually take it.”

Then there’s Huddersfield’s Lee Nicholls, whose time-wasting tactics in the Championship have become notorious. His favourite trick was to line up a goal kick, call two of his defenders to the corners of the six-yard box as if he was going to play things short, mull it all over for a bit, before sending those defenders back on their way.

He was cautioned seven times last season on their way to the play-off final but has kept it down to a paltry three this season, possibly because there have been fewer positive results to ‘see out’ for the relegation-threatened Terriers. Surely new boss Neil Warnock will not stand for these underhand tactics.

He can be joined in the ‘time-wasting as an art form’ hall of fame by Al-Wehda goalie Abdulquddus Atiah, who in a game against Hajer FC last season briefly did a decent impression of those human statues you see in Covent Garden, freezing with his hands either side of the ball until the opposition striker became more and more irked. That’s West Ham hero Modibo Maiga getting grumpy at Atiah’s antics, by the way.

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— out of context saudi football🇸🇦 (@1ksafootball) April 23, 2022

The other power a ’keeper has to really slow things down is injury. Or, perhaps more accurately, ‘injury’, taking advantage of the fact the game can’t continue when the goalie is indisposed.

“I always hated — still do — when goalkeepers fake a cramp or embellish it when they get hit,” says Pyzdrowski. “I totally understand why they do it, but personally I always felt it was a slap in the face to the opposition. But, to each their own.”

Sometimes it is all a little more coordinated.

“I played under Tony Pulis and he was the world’s best at making you waste time,” said Foster last year. “If you went 1-0 up or something, his instruction was, ‘You’ve got to time waste’. Me, as a goalie, I would be the first guy to enforce that. I would take my time with a goal kick, I’d take ages over it.”

“I was at Lincoln with the Cowleys,” says Walker. “In one game, 65 minutes gone, they encouraged the ’keeper to go down. I wanted nothing to do with it. You see it more and more and it’s horrible, but it could be the difference.”

Of course, as Martinez found out, sometimes it can backfire.

Take Jordan Pickford in the Merseyside derby at Anfield last season. Everton tried their best to play spoilers as part of their relegation scrap, which included Pickford doing his best to disrupt things by sinking to his knees when he collected the ball, offering a little wink and smile to his colleagues. This was in the first half, so when Liverpool broke through after the break, there was mirth to be had, with Alisson mimicking his counterpart’s antics. The crowd, already not fans of Pickford after his part in Virgil van Dijk’s injury the previous season, enjoyed themselves.

Chris Kirkland similarly got his comeuppance when Wigan faced Arsenal in 2007. Wigan took the lead in the 35th minute and did their best to slow things down for the rest of the game, until Arsenal equalised with nine minutes remaining. Thierry Henry, who did not take kindly to Kirkland’s tactics — “Kirkland started to waste time from the first minute” — collected the ball and thrust it in the ’keeper’s face, asking if he would like it back to waste some more time. Arsenal went on to score a winner, after which classic old japester Jens Lehmann aped Kirkland, was booked and thus earned himself a suspension.

Walker has an even more extreme example. “I got sent off at Millwall away. Dennis Wise had basically been reffing the game, so I thought I would waste a bit of time, get the odds in my favour again, but the ref added it on at the end. We went behind, so then I had to start rushing it a bit more.

“We got a free kick on the halfway line, I sent everyone up and went to take it and Wise was doing exactly what I was doing, holding the ball, talking to the ref, not letting me take it. So I ended up losing my head and giving him a slap — maybe not a slap, more of a push-punch. It was rubbish. He staggered back like I had properly jabbed him. The ref’s eyes lit up and sent me off.”

Time-wasting may have been the indirect cause of that red card, but while seven goalkeepers have been sent off for two bookings in Premier League history, as far as we can work out, none of those were for time-wasting.

But it has happened elsewhere: for example, when Leganes were trying to see out a 0-0 draw with Atletico Madrid in 2020, their ’keeper Ivan Cuellar was sent on his way in the 93rd minute for a particularly blatant piece of time-wasting, sinking to the floor behind the goal when the ball was thrown in his direction.

Ivan Cuellar getting his second yellow against Atletico Madrid for time-wasting in 2020 (Photo: Quality Sport Images via Getty Images)

Arguably the greatest example of this came in Brazil, in the 2015 Campeonato Paulista, when a Corinthians keeper was dismissed — somewhat controversially, it must be said — for two examples of time-wasting. The first came when, with his team 1-0 up over Palmeiras, he took an excessively leisurely approach to a goal kick, and the second came after he threw an extra ball onto the pitch to slow things down. The name of this player who fell foul of the referee’s watch? Cassio. Lovely.

Ultimately, this is just another way of trying to gain whatever advantage you can. “Goalkeeping and football, in general, is all about testing the limits of what you can successfully get away with,” says Pyzdrowski.

Is running the clock down really ‘dark arts’? Does it really offend our moral sensibilities? Like Martinez, most keepers will do it in the full knowledge that for the most part it will work, disrupt the opposition and probably help you get the desired result, but it could equally blow up in your face.

“Goalies get that much stick,” says Walker. “The odds aren’t stacked in our favour, so you would get them back in our favour in any way you could.”

(Top photo: Jacques Feeney/Offside via Getty Images)