Leeds United boss Daniel Farke has called for a change to the game’s laws

Leeds United boss Daniel Farke has called for a change to the game’s laws after Manchester City conducted a team talk while keeper Gianluigi Donnarumma was down receiving treatment.

The Whites were on top in the second half after Farke’s half-time changes introduced Dominic Calvert-Lewin who made it 2-1. City were visibly struggling to stop Leeds from playing and the game was paused so that Donnarumma could receive treatment after going to ground. Pep Guardiola immediately called all of his outfield players to the touchline and conducted a team talk. Although City then did have a better spell, they conceded an equaliser when Calvert-Lewin won a penalty and Lukas Nmecha found the net at the second time of asking.

The hosts went on to win the game with Phil Foden’s late goal but the team talk incident became a major talking point in Farke’s post-game press conference. He made it clear he was not in favour of such a tactic.

“Yes. Everyone knows why he went down, right?” Farke began. “The elephant in the room. You can speak about it. Why he went down, I think it was obvious. It’s within the rules, it’s smart. If I like it, if it’s in the sense of fair play, if it should be like this, I keep it to myself. I leave it with the authorities. It’s within the rules. I asked the fourth official at this point, do you want to do something, ‘no our hands are tied, we can’t do anything.’ But if we don’t educate our players in football what to do in terms of fair play, sportsmanship and you just try to bend the rules to your advantage, and you can do a fake injury in order to do additional team talks, it’s nothing I personally like. But if it’s within the rules I can’t complain.”

Farke believes the officials had ‘tools’ they could use to deal with such an incident but he would be in favour of altering the game’s laws to prevent it from happening.

“We should think about how we deal with it,” he said. “My recommendation was okay do me a favour, give every 50:50 in favour of the away team. Probably after 90 minutes at 2-2 I would have blown for full-time. I think there are tools you can use to make sure this won’t happen but if not then we have to change the rules. There’s a reason the goalkeeper goes down. It’s not a question for myself, who am I, I’m a Premier League manager, it’s not a topic for me. I think it’s for the authorities to find a solution. Is it in the sense of fair play I would have my doubts.”

The Leeds boss was keen to stress that he took no issue with Guardiola, with whom he has a good relationship.

“I don’t criticise my colleague, I don’t criticise Pep,” he said. “If he has time to do this and there is an injury, I would also do a team talk. It’s not like he’s done something wrong. We have a great relationship. He’s the best manager in the world. There’s no one better for changes during a game. There’s not one per cent criticism on my colleague. This happens, everyone knows, I think there are tools to deal with it or we need to find other solutions.”

When asked what those solutions were, Farke responded: “I’m a football manager, I concentrate on my job. I’m not the chief of the referees, our boards who do the rules. Perhaps when I’m 85 I’ll be on such a board. Right now I’m concentrating on keeping Leeds in the league.”