IFAB makes temporal changes to Law 3 of the laws of the game

The International Football Association Board (IFAB) has made a temporal change of law 3 of the laws of the game.

The association on May 8,2020 announced a temporal amendment of the third law of the game ( player substitution ) as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic impact on daily life and football.

As the pandemic in many countries is receiving positive response towards normal life with many countries planning to resume football activities, IFAB and FIFA has temporally introduced 5 players substitutions instead of the usual three (3 ) substitutions allocated by laws of the game for the completion of the 2019/2020 season.

The amendment is set to come into force from June 1,2020 for all competitions but competitions that will restart have the option to use the laws of the game 2020/2021 or the previous laws of the game 2019/2020.

Below are the changes of the temporal amendment document :

Each team will be permitted to use a maximum of five substitutes;
To reduce disruption of the match, each team will have a maximum of three opportunities to make substitutions during the game, substitutions may also be made at half -time.

If both teams make a substitution at the same time, this will count as one of the three opportunities for each team.

Unused substitutions and opportunities are carried forward into extra time.

Where competitions rules allow an additional substitution in extra time, teams will each have one additional substitution opportunity; substitutions may be made before the start of extra time and at halftime in extra time.

The association also added that all friendly, warm-up or practice matches in preparation for the restart of the 2019/2020 season competition should use the laws that will used when the competition restart.

 

By: Julius Addae Oduro 

(nanaoduro20@gmail.com)