How FIFA's New World Cup Rules Will Affect Your Team

Just when I thought I had a grip on this summer's World Cup, the time differences, the long winding pathway to the final and how much money I've saved by not going

FIFA go and throw a spanner in the works with some brand new rules for the tournament. Don't act like you're not surprised

From injury time limits to bans on covering your mouth and an even more powerful VAR remit

this is exactly how the new World Cup rules will affect your team

Now we all know that football's lawmakers love to tinker with the game. Usually it's a minor tweak to the handball rule that nobody understands

but this time they've completely rewritten the blueprint for how a match is policed

To make sense of the incoming chaos, I've broken these changes down into three distinct categories

The good at first sight, the okay I guess, and the downright terrible

Let's start with a bit of positivity, shall we? Because believe it or not, two rules are actually looking to fix some of the most frustrating blind spots in modern football

First up, we have the evolution of VAR. after review west arman number 19 now i know what you're thinking more var is usually a recipe for

a massive headache and we'll come back to that shortly but look at what they're actually changing

here for years one of the biggest complaints has been that var can't intervene on a second yellow

card if a referee completely bottles a decision and sends a player off for a soft second yellow

the video assistant has to just sit there with their hands tied watching the game getting ruined

Starting now, that rule is dead. VAR can now step in to overturn a clearly incorrect second yellow card

fix cases of mistaken identity, and even correct wrongly awarded corner kicks

if it can be done quickly before the restart. Honestly, this feels like a massive safety net for some teams who like to play on the edge

maybe with a little bit too much aggression. I mean, it does make sense. If you can review a red card that will have an obvious impact on the game

you should be able to check second yellows too. And corners also make sense, right

like I mentioned they're supposed to be overturned only if it doesn't delay the restart however I do

feel like this is the start of a slippery slope into taking every decision out of the assistant

and the referee's hands and just having camera-led reviews for everything in the future like there

might not even be a ref still for now given how much set pieces seem to be such an integral part

of the modern game it feels like an injection of genuine common sense and that brings us nicely to

the second good rule which is going to put an absolute end to the dark arts we see during set

pieces from this moment on var can now penalize players for fouls committed before a corner or

free kick is actually taken we've all seen the same scene play out the ball hasn't been kicked

yet but inside the six yard box it looks like a royal rumble defenders are wrestling pulling shirts

pulling hair and basically doing everything to stop an attacker from moving previously referees

would just blow the whistle give a soft warning and tell them to calm down with very little

repercussion compared to when the exact same thing happens seconds later now if an attacker gets

fouled before the ball is in play vr will recommend an on-field review and the appropriate card will

be handed out and then the set piece will be retaken so if you a team that relies heavily on chaotic physical defending at corners think of pretty much every single Arsenal corner this season your players are going to be under an absolute microscope at this World Cup The sneaky shirt pulls in the box are officially dead but

here's the kicker for that one, and to be honest, any VAR rule. I'm not so sure that any sort of

argy-bargy in the box is worth review, because nothing is actually going to be that bad before

the ball is kicked however if we are reviewing everything how long is this going to take the

sheer amount of time to get every single decision run through var corners second yellows pulling

someone's hair at a free kick it means we may end up with copious amounts of injury time players

playing well over 100 minutes per match and the in-stadium experience not to mention on tv going

from a frenetic two hours to a labored three hour plus event i think you can see why i named this

category good at first sight. Still, compared to what's coming up in the terrible section later

it's not so bad. But before we get to that, we have the okay, I guess, rules. The middle ground

in all of this, if you will. The kind of rules where you could totally see what FIFA are trying

to achieve, but the actual execution of them is going to cause absolute administrative mayhem on

the pitch. First off is what I like to call the 10 second eviction notice. We've all seen it a

million times. It's the 89th minute. A team is hanging on to a 1-0 lead and the manager decides

to make a tactical substitution to eat away at the clock. The player being subbed off then suddenly

looks like he's walking through treacle, clapping the fans, shaking the ref's hand and taking three

business days to cross the white line. Well, FIFA have had enough. Under the new rules, players have

exactly 10 seconds to leave the field from the moment the board goes up and they must exit at

closest byline. If they fail to do that, the substitute must wait one full minute of active

play before coming on. Think about how insane that is from a tactical standpoint. If a player

drags his heels for 11 seconds, he forces his own team to play with 10 men for a minimum of a minute

Imagine that in injury time. Managers who micromanage every single second of the match

are going to be having sleepless nights training their players to sprint off the pitch. It's

obviously much harder as well if you're carrying a knock. It completely turns time wasting on its

head and the logistics get even weirder when you look at another newly timed rule. From now on

if a player receives medical treatment, they then must leave the field of play for one full minute

after the restart. There are exceptions for concussions and goalkeeper collisions, but for

your standard knocks, you're off for 60 seconds. Now the logic here is solid, right? It stops teams

from faking injuries to break the opposition's momentum or catch their breath but the flip side

is that it heavily punishes teams that are legitimately getting caught by heavy tackles

look at brazil versus serbia for the previous world cup in 2022 neymar was fouled nine times

in that game granted not every foul is an injury but i think we can say the serbians were employing some rough tactics to stop neymar momentum if he gets battered nine times throughout a game and needs medical attention he then have to miss a combined nine minutes of the match Sure maybe it stop some players from feigning injury but there could

also be an incentive to whack the opposition's best player knowing they'll have to leave the

pitch for 60 seconds. Under these rules, you could find yourselves consistently down to 10 men for

chunks of the match. And to top it all off, FIFA have also banned tactical timeouts during goalkeeper

injuries if a keeper is down getting treatment players from both teams are legally forbidden

from running over to the touchline to get a quick tactical lecture from their manager

no huddles no whiteboard sessions nothing you just have to stand there and wait we can't have keepers

faking injuries for the sake of team talks all the time if you add those in plus the water breaks

oh by the way there's going to be water breaks although that's nothing really new the var reviews

timings can run all over the shop here it is all designed to keep the game moving and look i

appreciate the effort to kill off the dark arts of time wasting but by introducing strict stopwatches

and touchline bans it feels like fifa are trying to control every single second of the game it's

like being micromanaged by an annoying boss when all you want to do is take a 10 minute break at work to watch some youtube who knows maybe that's exactly what you're doing right now but i guess if

you think a 10 second substitution countdown is a bit intense just wait until you see what they've

cooked up for our final category the downright terrible because this is where common sense goes

completely out the window. Video aside for a second though, here's a quick hypothetical question

for you. Imagine you've been silly enough to book your holidays during the World Cup or you're

traveling somewhere for work and can't get your World Cup fix. You've got your TV license sorted

to watch the BBC coverage in the UK or the ITV coverage, but not abroad. So what do you do

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click the link in the description below to learn more it's embarrassing it's a disgrace that's what

it is a disgrace remember at school when your teacher is trying to get the class to shut up so

they raise their hand with a countdown a sort of a you've got five seconds yeah we've got referees

doing that now because for every goal kick and throw in a player has five seconds counted ever

so tediously on the ref's hand to get the ball back in play. If the clock runs out on the throne

it's turned over to the opposition. If the clock runs out on a goal kick, you are just getting a

yellow card for time-wasting. The opposing team gets an immediate corner kick. This is an absolute

death sentence for the elite ball-playing goalkeepers who like to bait the press, assess the

field, and build meticulously from the back. Imagine the 93rd minute of a crucial knockout

game. The keeper takes six seconds to spot the ball because he's waiting for his centre-backs

to split the referee's hand goes up the countdown hit zero and suddenly you've handed the opposition

a free corner mark my words this will happen at some point there will be a goal it will hit the fan but not as much as this final rule which is bound to be the most chaotic and highly controversial rule of the entire

tournament the mouth covering red card under the new law any player who covers their mouth with

their hand arm or shirt in a confrontational situation will be shown an immediate red card

if it appears to be a friendly chat then there's no issue now the context here is serious it comes

directly after Benfica's Gianluca Prestiani was accused of hiding discriminatory slurs behind his

shirt during a clash of Vinicius Jr. in the Champions League, resulting in a massive global

ban. And while the intent to stamp out hidden abuse is completely correct, the actual enforcement

is a legal minefield for referees. Players instinctively cover their mouths through

everything nowadays. It's become such an instinctive reaction before whispering tactical adjustments to a teammate, just swearing to the high heavens in frustration because they're

blowing out their arse after a 60-yard sprint. How on earth is a referee supposed to accurately

differentiate between a player hiding a vile insult and a player just expressing emotion

Aggressive, highly animated talkers who play with their heart on their sleeves, I'm thinking of

Bruno Fernandes, Emi Martinez, they're in trouble. Even the most positive or encouraging words can

look aggressive when you're in the heat of the battle. And the moment they get into a strong

discussion and instinctively put their hand to their face, they're heading down the tunnel. It risks completely sterilizing the passion of the game

although, as I mentioned, the intent behind it is absolutely correct. There is zero room for discrimination in football whatsoever

And finally, then, we come to the ultimate nuclear option, where if a team leaves the field of play to protest a refereeing decision

the players involved get a red card. Any team official, so a coach or manager, inciting it gets a red

and the team automatically forfeit the game, resulting in a 3-0 loss

By introducing this, FIFA haven't solved bad refereeing, they've just legally trapped the players

They've got to stand there, take a catastrophic decision on the chin and keep playing

because walking away to take a stand means losing your entire World Cup spot

Maybe, just maybe, FIFA wouldn't have to fear these protests if they didn't keep adding more and more complex rules to interpret

but hey, what do I know? These rules seem fairly straightforward on paper, but they aren't as easy to implement in real time

The flow of each game is different. The stakes aren't always the same

And there are so many things that can be open to interpretation. One minute a push in the area is being punished, the next it's not

Another moment there's a player taking too long to take a throw in but not being punished for it

In short, my prediction for how these rules will go down sounds something like a Gennaro Gattuso press conference

Sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe s**t. Still, despite all these rule changes

I'm determined to be positive and believe that we will see the moments of magic which make a World Cup memorable

When the ball's flying around at breakneck speed, when everything is on the line as the final whistle approaches

and when genius strikes in the midst of all the chaos and the ball hits the back of the net

Before VAR checking, that is