First, there is another replay angle straight on from the other side of the field and zoomed in that shows Thiaré starting to walk back toward the Atlanta end of the pitch normally — until he saw Gavran (the Toronto goalie) put his head down and literally smother his own eyes in between his arms and the ball after making that final save. That is when Thiaré turned back and started the whole ruse of drinking from Gavran’s water bottle to give himself a benign excuse to be lollygagging behind the play and not draw attention to himself. At the start of the replay above, you can see the end of it. Gavran stayed down and was blissfully unaware of his surroundings just long enough for the Atlanta player to be completely out of his peripheral vision. So, the Atlanta striker did this very intentionally and although it was a total long shot, he knew what he was doing. If Gavran had simply punted the ball away, the game was over. But Thiaré expected the keeper to waste a few extra seconds by rolling the ball out in front of him and he did. It wasn’t a goal kick, so the ball was in play.

Second, a player cannot leave the pitch and re-enter without permission from the referee, but this is not strictly enforced at the end line and it’s not clear to me if he fully stepped out or had a foot on the line. Atlanta almost always gets screwed by VAR so if he did step out, maybe Atlanta is regressing to the mean a bit with this outcome.

Third, you can see one Toronto player begin gesturing and shouting to the keeper a second before the theft takes place but it’s too late. That is the player (it looks like 47 Kosi Thompson) that ends up a few feet away when Thiaré shoots it, so he actually got back very quickly. He would have had a decent chance to take it away had Thiaré held it half a second longer or had Gavran reacted well enough to force the striker to go back to his left.

Lastly, you can see Kobe Franklin (who is apparently a white man named Kobe, so he’s got that going for him) doing perhaps the weirdest comforting of a teammate ever in the middle of the clip. He points or hits Gavran in the chest half a dozen times and at one point appears to yell, “it’s fine!” while things were definitely not fine, Bob. Kobe Franklin losing this game is one of the reasons I will smile about this win for a long time. Just a few minutes before this, he almost started a brawl by holding on to Atlanta United homegrown hero Caleb Wiley’s jersey and refusing to let go even well after the ball had gone out of play. Enjoy the loss, Kobe Franklin!