Referees will penalise goalkeepers who time-waste by awarding their opponents a corner in a radical change to the rules of football.
At its annual general meeting in Belfast on Saturday, the International Football Association Board (Ifab) unanimously approved what could prove a hugely contentious change to the way the sport is played, starting this summer.
Under the current laws of the game, referees can award an indirect free-kick against keepers who hold on to the ball for more than six seconds, something that is not always enforced.
As part of a crackdown on such time-wasting, match officials will now be ordered to be stricter about applying the law while giving keepers an additional two seconds before penalising them.
The change comes a year after Ifab approved trials at its AGM at Loch Lomond in which the offence was punished with a corner, or throw-in level with the penalty spot, instead of an indirect free-kick.
Competitions were allowed to decide whether to trial either awarding a corner or a throw-in, with the former sanction applied in Premier League 2.
Mark Bullingham, the chief executive of the Football Association and one of Ifab’s five directors, last year rejected suggestions law-makers were tinkering too much with the game.
“The reality is these things are trials,” he said. “If they don’t work, they don’t get put through to the game.
“Equally, if you ask someone if their team has just lost 1-0 and the other team were using time-wasting tactics at the end of the game, they would be frustrated at that.
“We see so many patterns with a goalkeeper when the score is 0-0 holding on to the ball for five or six seconds. But when they are 1-0 up, suddenly they are holding on to the ball for 25 seconds; it’s not right.
“So I think it is important to look at these changes, trial them, and if they make the game better then why not?”
