Lawmakers in football are examining rule changes intended to curb time-wasting linked to goalkeepers receiving treatment. The prospect of forcing an outfield player to spend time on the sidelines is one of the proposals under consideration.<\/p>\n
Manchester City were accused of using that tactic over the weekend. Gianluigi Donnarumma received treatment in the second half of Saturday\u2019s clash with Leeds United, giving Pep Guardiola an opening to talk to his team after they were left reeling by a strong burst of form from the visitors. Guardiola denied any skullduggery and even if Donnarumma was hamming it up, he would hardly be the first.<\/p>\n
BBC Sport reported that the issue was discussed “at length” in October by IFAB, the International Football Association Board, and the Technical Advisory Panels. One proposal would require an outfield player to spend 30 seconds on the sidelines if that team\u2019s goalkeeper requires treatment. That sidelined player would be nominated by their manager, a suggestion the report said could create complications. An alternative measure under consideration was to ban players from going across to the touchline during these stoppages.<\/p>\n
IFAB will likely bring this issue and other proposed rule changes up for further debate at their annual business meeting on Jan. 20, 2026.<\/p>\n
Leeds boss Daniel Farke brought the incident into focus after seeing his side\u2019s momentum disrupted. “Everyone knows why he went down, right? It\u2019s not like the elephant in the room,” the German boss seethed. “It\u2019s more like you can speak about it. You can ask me what I think about why he went down. It was obvious.”<\/p>\n
Farke acknowledged the act did not currently breach the laws of the game while urging action. “It\u2019s within the rules. It\u2019s smart. If I like it, if it\u2019s in the sense of fair play, if it should be like this, I keep it to myself,” he fumed. “I leave it with the authorities to find solutions for it. It\u2019s within the rules. I asked the fourth official at this point, \u2018Do you want to do something?\u2019 He said, \u2018No, our hands are tied. We can\u2019t do anything.'”<\/p>\n
He added: “We know this happens, but if we don\u2019t educate our players in football, what to do in terms of fair play, sportsmanship and you just try to bend the rules to your advantage, you can even do a fake injury in order to do an additional team talk, it\u2019s nothing I personally like. If it\u2019s within the rules, I can\u2019t complain about it. We should think about how we can deal with it, and also how we educate it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
IFAB weighs sanctions for goalkeeper stoppages after Donnarumma halted Leeds’ momentum on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4796,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[702,238,172],"tags":[1215],"class_list":["post-4797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leeds-united","category-manchester-city","category-epl","tag-controversy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}