Revolutionary rules for the 2024-25 season: Wenger Law and temporary layoffs

Temporary expulsions, warnings to anyone who approaches the referee other than the captain and the Wenger Law, especially regarding offside, have begun to appear on the refereeing horizon, and it is expected that some of these new rules appear in football in the 2024-25 season. season.

Many people complain about changes in football rules, especially handball rules, as there are endless problems with the complicated interpretation of the new rules.

Some of them are difficult to explain, but they have all been tested, debated and finally approved by the IFAB in previous years, although it must be said that they have a British flavour, with four of the eight IFAB members coming from the British islands.

Changes, modifications or new rules are currently being prepared and could be implemented at the next IFAB meeting in early 2024.

Wenger’s Law, that is, reversing the offside rule and allowing the striker to be in front of the defender as long as he keeps the last part of his body in contact with the opponent, is currently being tested in different youth tournaments in Sweden and Italy. .

PREPARATION FOR THE COMPLETE REVOLUTION

The first tests are satisfactory and the referees consider that such a change would be even more in line with the spirit with which offside was born (1925) and would undoubtedly encourage attacking football.

The question is whether defenders think the same. FIFA, through the IFAB, is pushing hard for this change to occur, which would represent a complete and absolute revolution in football as it is currently conceived. And they say it with statistics in hand.

TEMPORARY EXPORT

Another big debate in the world of football is that of temporary layoffs.

Interestingly, the IFAB approved the implementation of this initiative in 2017, but it was implemented in certain categories. Six years later, the IFAB is trying the practice again, without stating that it could be implemented in professional football.

The approved standard establishes:

“A provisional expulsion is a sanction that prevents a player who has committed a cautionable offense (yellow card) from continuing in the match for a certain period of time and includes immediate suspension. “The philosophy behind provisional suspensions is that an immediate sanction can have a significant and immediate positive impact on the behavior of the offending player and, therefore, his team.” This remained in the mandate book of each Federation.

“IT MAY BE MORE DETERRENT THAN A WARNING”

Now everything has changed and it is clearly accepted that temporary expulsions lasting between 10 and 15 percent of the match time can be applied.

This situation was also recognized by Lukas Brud, one of the strong men of the IFAB:

“We have identified that player misconduct is a serious problem for football. We are examining what we can do by changing the rules of the game. A planned expulsion may be more of a deterrent than a warning. “There is also great interest from various stakeholders in the idea that only the captain can properly approach the referee.”

REQUEST FROM THE REFEREES

The referees’ association wants to put an end to the scenes in which, in almost every match, the referee is suddenly surrounded and reprimanded by the players. They want to introduce a rule whereby only the captain can approach the referee and he knows or assumes that other players who do so will receive a warning.