Arsenal Player Eats During Game

I'm sharing a video that will likely get removed rather quickly. (Update: The video got blocked almost immediately.)



On January 1st, I was home celebrating the first day of 2020 by watching an English Premier League match between Arsenal and Manchester United. As you can see (by the pictures below, not the video), near the end of the second half, Arsenal's Lucas Torreira is clearly eating chocolate, an energy bar, or something else in the middle of the game.

Then, it appears that he put the remaining food into his pocket. My immediate thought was this seems really unusual, and then I began considering this from the perspective of a soccer referee. I don't think there is anything in the Laws of the Game that would prevent someone from having a mid-game snack. However, if a player threw or spit the food at someone, the player would receive a red card.

Now I kind of hope that this becomes a trend though I'm sure it would come down to sponsorships. Look, there's LeBron James running the Lakers offense while eating a McDonald's Big Mac! And there's Michael Thomas of the New Orleans Saints making an incredible one-handed catch...because he's holding a KIND bar in his other hand. How is Sidney Crosby able to make such an amazing pass while holding and eating a bag of Skittles?

Maybe eating during games will encourage more youth to play sports?