As a soccer referee, I would consider that extremely poor officiating.
The referee has the discretion to add time at the end of the half for time wasting. Thus, there’s no imperative for restarting the game within any particular time limit.
If a player fails to follow the valid directive of a referee, the proper way to handle that is to talk to the player. If it continues, you caution the player. If it continues again, you caution him again and send him off (rarely necessary as a method of player management).
But I wouldn’t be shocked to hear that something like that happened in the old NASL. I stopped watching the NASL back in the early 80s after a brief spell of wanting to get into the sport as it existed here in America. I quickly divined that American soccer bore little resemblance to the real thing, sadly.
Nah. It was finally made Official official in 2003 after pressure from shirt sponsors. Also there had been incidents of people making political statements on shirts worn under the main shirt (Robbie Fowler did this IIRC).