It’s the last second of the NBA Finals. The clock reached 0.0 in a one-point game, but play continued for several seconds as the Golden State Warriors drove to the rim.
The match at Madison Square Garden is far away. The final bell went to the 12th round, but the referee did not stop the advance of Oleksandr Usyk, with the Ukrainian boxer close to a knockout.
With one lap remaining in the Formula One World Championship and in a winner-takes-all situation, the race director refuses to drop the checkered flag as second place gets the leader. Actually, after the controversial end of the 2021 season, maybe that’s not the best example.
However, the point still stands. The above scenarios are ridiculous — every major sport has a clear ending, whether it’s an expired game clock, the final pitch, the point of the match. They are objective, not subjective.
Football is the exception and the final moments of Real Madrid’s 2-2 draw with Valencia on Saturday night exposed its limitations.
This is what happened.
Bellingham and other players surround the referee after the decision (Jose Hernandez/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Seven minutes of stoppage time came on board by the fourth official. After that, there was a two-minute delay when a penalty initially awarded against Real was overturned by VAR. The visiting side’s hackles were emotional on an emotional night — winger Vinicius Junior had earlier scored two goals at a stadium where he was subjected to racist abuse last season.
Delays meant the match continued until its 99th minute and as Luka Modric approached a Madrid corner, referee Jesus Gil Manzano signaled that it was the final game of the match.
Valencia cleared — but only to the edge of the box. As Madrid winger Brahim Diaz prepared to cross the ball back, Gil Manzano whistled. The game is over.
Less than a second later, Diaz delivered his cross. The referee’s whistle has not yet registered with the players waiting for it. Jude Bellingham, who has scored 16 goals in La Liga this season, heads over. As the celebration continued, he and Madrid thought it was the winner, another special moment in his amazing debut season.
Gil Manzano was determined. There is no purpose. Bellingham rushed the referee with captain Dani Carvajal, Vinicius Jr, Joselu, Andriy Lunin, and Antonio Rudiger.
“It’s af*****g goal,” Bellingham yelled at Gil Manzano — and sent off. Speaking after the match, Carlo Ancelotti backed his player.
“Bellingham didn’t insult the referee, he said in English, ‘It’s af*****g goal’, which is what we all thought,” the Madrid manager said. “He approached the referee, but what happened, that was quite normal.”
Madrid’s official website called it an “unprecedented referee decision” — but according to the letter of the law, they had no case. Gil Manzano played enough stoppage time and signaled his intention to end the game and the final whistle meant the game was over. No ifs, buts, or maybes.
The anger stems from one of football’s unwritten laws — that when a team is attacking, the final whistle must not be blown.
“The ball is in the air — what is it?” Bellingham appears to have said during his protests. From the replay, Gil Manzano’s first whistle came before the ball was delivered — with the second and third taking place after the ball was in the air, but before Bellingham got in front of it. The first whistle is all that is needed to stop the game.
Football’s rulebook is vague about the exact time a referee should blow. According to the International Football Association Board (IFAB), the sport’s legislators, the referee “acts as timekeeper”, “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 knowing that it was incorrect if the referee signaled the end of the first or second half.”
This density leads to a subjective system. The game is developed in such a way that the expectation is that the half should not end if a team is on the attack, but without it being codified, the referees can interpret it differently — if they recognize it.
What does it mean to be under attack? Shoot or cross? What if there is a transition opportunity? What if a player has a clear run at goal from the back half? Was 60 seconds of patient build-up from around the edge of the box, a la Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City, a sustained attack?
Every other element of football is tightly controlled. The IFAB Laws of the Game is a 230-page document. Six of those pages, including diagrams, are devoted to what constitutes a handball. Why is one of its most important elements — when a game is over — barely worth mentioning?
After posting about it on X, formerly Twitter, someone responded saying the law is clear — it’s game over when the whistle blows. Why the widespread anger then? Others responded by saying it’s only an issue because it happened in Bellingham and Real Madrid — but it’s not the first time it’s happened. It was only a matter of time before it happened again in a high-stakes, high-profile match.
Going back to the 1978 World Cup, Welsh referee Clive Thomas blew for full-time with a Brazil corner in the air in a group stage against Sweden — disallowing a Zico header that would have given Brazil a 2-1 win . The decision meant they finished second in their group, placing them in a more difficult pool in the second round, where they failed to qualify for the final.
In January 2021, Paul Tierney blew for half-time seconds before the end of the allotted one minute of stoppage time. Liverpool, playing Manchester United in a crucial Premier League match, were behind the ball at half-time, but Sadio Mane appeared to be over the target. He couldn’t put the ball in the net before the clock hit 46 minutes.
A month later, Craig Pawson reviews Manchester United’s trip to West Bromwich Albion. With the score at 1-1 and the clock at 47.07 after two minutes of stoppage time, United broke from their own half — with four attackers against just one West Brom defender. Pawson blasted the ball 70 yards from the opposition goal and was surrounded by angry United players.
Frighteningly, in November 2017, Spanish second-division side Ponferradina thought they had a late winner to lift them out of the relegation zone, but referee Alvaro Lopez Parra blew the whistle when Andy Rodriguez threw the ball past the opposition goalkeeper.
Gim. Segoviana – Ponferradina (0-0): goal annulled by Ponfe in the last game. 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 tendency to give home teams or favorites more chances, and for inconsistency, where referees interpret differently what constitutes an attack.
Visit the refereeing forums and the same issues arise. Dozens of native officers have stories of being surrounded after blowing full time. Their decision is final, but subjective. People disagree.
“Not much aggro, believe me, to shoot in a neutral situation,” wrote a referee, explaining a controversial incident. “But it’s not always the right thing to do.”
It doesn’t have to be this way.
The IFAB annual conference took place last week in Scotland. There, football lawmakers discussed permanent and temporary concussion substitutes, accidental handballs, and encroachment during penalties. What else could they have discussed if the whole time was on the agenda?
Football has some challenges. Because of the extra stoppages after the 90th minute — injuries, substitutions, celebrations, timeouts — referees can’t just blow off the second the clock strikes 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 grow to unprecedented lengths — the average ball-in-play time in the Premier League is around 55 minutes.
Under the current system, however, teams complain if the whistle blows while they are on the attack. In the midst of this emptiness, no one is happy.
A simple tweak might help. At stoppage time, the referee can switch to a stop-clock system and blow exactly one minute. For example, if a team scores after the referee signals that there will be four minutes of stoppage time, the referee can stop time, before restarting when the ball is in play, and blow exactly at 94.00. Professional stadiums all have clocks that show the exact time, so that players can stay aware.
It gives the law objectivity, allows for stoppages after the 90th minute and, by only being enforced in stoppage time, means that games will not take more than two hours to complete. This is not a complete novelty in the sport — futsal already has a designated timekeeper and a strict full-time whistle.
Bellingham’s ‘goal’ should not stand, but the vagueness and limitations of football’s laws put referees in a difficult position. The game is difficult enough to control. This is not a case of a policy being changed — but of fundamental clarity being introduced.
(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Dan Goldfarb)
