Silly question, but how long are you allowed to take to walk to the penalty spot? I ask because Trayvon Reid, Mount Pleasant’s Jamaican striker, took 19 seconds. Walking in slow motion. I noted it in my notebook, under the “rituals” tab, just below warming up in a bib.
The context, for those who were like me on the 7:32 train: Mount Pleasant were playing Sando, a club from Trinidad and Tobago, in the CONCACAF Caribbean Cup playoffs. Mount Pleasant had scored early. After half an hour, the referee pointed to the penalty spot, and Reid took it to make it 2-0.
According to Sporza (the Belgian broadcaster), he hoped to unsettle the Trinidadian goalkeeper. I thought that was a fair idea. If you wait a long time for something, you get stressed. That’s how stoppage time was explained to me.
Except the shot came out very weak, and the goalkeeper, Teshorne Ragoo, saved it. I re-enacted the scene in my kot (student room) with a ball of paper and the bin. After 19 seconds of slow walking, I was the one who was unsettled. The bin hadn’t moved.
After the break, Sando equalised. Mount Pleasant keep their chances intact for the second leg, and the video has gone round social media.
Tactically, I work on the slow walk too. But at our place, after ten seconds the club delegate asks if we need a chair.
In basketball, the free throw has a clock, I looked. Here, I looked for the time limit on walking. I checked, and actually nobody knows. Anyway, I still have a lot to learn.
It’s true, we checked: Sporza.
