The International Football Federations Thread

[Lineker]

Fifa has confirmed that the Confederation of African Football president, Ahmad Ahmad, is being questioned by French authorities investigating corruption allegations, following reports that he had been arrested at his hotel in Paris on Thursday morning. Football’s world governing body also suggested that its ethics committee has been investigating allegations made against Ahmad.

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Cameroon have announced the Africa Cup of Nations will be moved from the summer to next January - which will have implications for a number of Premier League clubs.

The tournament was due to be held in June and July but, due to weather conditions in the country at that time of year, the Cameroon Football Federation has decided to stage it between 9^th January and 6^th February.

“It (2021 Africa Cup of Nations) will be played in Cameroon from 9^th January to 6^th February, 2021. Date changed for weather reasons at Cameroon’s request,” the federation posted on Twitter after a meeting with representatives from the Confederation of African Football.

Since 1960, the tournament was always held during winter or early spring, mainly due to climate reasons and to avoid conflict with other international tournaments or club competitions, but it was changed last year when Egypt hosted the first summer tournament.

The move back to winter will affect the likes of Liverpool, who could have Mohamed Salah (Egypt), Sadio Mané (Senegal) and Naby Keïta (Guinea) missing.

Arsenal’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Gabon) and Nicolas Pépé (Ivory Coast) are also likely to feature, with Manchester City, Manchester United and Leicester among other Premier League clubs who may be without first-team players.

However, the new timing will avoid a clash with Fifa’s revamped 24-team Club World Cup to be played in China in June and July 2021.

The Afcon was due to be played immediately afterwards, meaning that players who took part in both competitions would get almost no rest in the summer and would return late for pre-season training in Europe.

Cameroon was originally due to stage the 2019 tournament but was stripped of hosting rights the previous November by CAF due to delays in preparations and security concerns. It subsequently agreed to host the 2021 tournament instead.

Ivory Coast, who had been due to stage the 2021 competition, were awarded the 2023 hosting rights at the expense of Guinea, which will now stage the contest in 2025.

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The Premier League will lobby the rule-making body Ifab to change the handball laws following the controversial penalty awarded against Tottenham’s Eric Dier last Sunday.

Dier was adjudged to have handled illegally, even though his back was turned, when an Andy Carroll header struck his raised arm against Newcastle. The referee, Peter Bankes, awarded a penalty, which Newcastle scored to equalise in second-half added time.

The rule that a player must be found to have handled the ball if their arm is raised above their shoulder – as was the case with Dier – will have to be followed until the end of the season but it is the Premier League’s hope that Ifab will review the law at that point.

The development comes as the referees’ body, the PGMOL, plans to roll out an overhauled version of the handball law at Premier League matches this weekend.

Changes will include allowing referees greater leniency in interpreting a player’s body shape during handball incidents. In the first three matchdays of the season, the PGMOL instructed referees to follow the letter of Ifab’s ruling that handball should be given if a player’s arm was in an “unnatural” position. That has been changed to acknowledge that, depending on a player’s momentum or body position, an “unnatural” shape could also be “expected”. Referees will be encouraged to award a foul or penalty only if the shape is unexpected.

Other tweaks to the rules include consideration of the time a player has had to respond before handling. If a referee judges that the distance was insufficient for a player to react and move out of the way, a penalty will not be given.

The Premier League acknowledges that this is not only a change to the rules weeks after implementing them but a change in emphasis too. After Fifa took control over the use of VAR technology this summer, it placed emphasis on a consistency of decision making across different countries. These tweaks will add subjectivity to the process in England, with all the controversies and debates that will likely ensue.

 

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The offside law is one of many rules in football that has become a joke.

The introduction of VAR has led to officials spending minutes deciding whether an incident was offside or not.

But fortunately, critics of the offside rule may be in luck.

That's because Arsene Wenger, FIFA's Chief of Global Football Development, wants to see it change.

The former Arsenal manager want to see players given onside if a single body part is in line with a defender. This would benefit the attacker and mean more goals would be scored.

WENGER'S IDEA TO CHANGE THE OFFSIDE RULE
“For the moment, you are offside if a part of your body that you can score with sits ahead of the body of a defender," he told L'Equipe, per GetFrenchFootballNews.

"I would like it to be that there is no offside so long as a (single) body part which a player can score with is in line with the defender.

"This could be too much of an advantage for an attacker, because that obliges the defenders to play higher up."

I've got to say, that would be a good idea from Wenger. That would mean more goals, and who wouldn't want that?

Wenger also wants to make a number of other law changes in football...

WENGER'S IDEA TO CHANGE CORNERS
"An in-swinging corner that goes out of play and comes back in could be made valid, this would create new goal-scoring opportunities," he added.

I don't think is necessarily needed, but it would create the odd goal here or there.

WENGER'S IDEA TO CHANGE FREE-KICKS
"There is also the option of quickly playing a free-kick to yourself," he continued.

Again, not really needed, but it's not something that fan are going to be angry about whether it changes or not.

WENGER'S IDEA TO CHANGE THROW-INS
He added: "I would also like to change the throw-in rule: five minutes before the end, a throw-in for you should be an advantage, but in these situations you are facing 10 outfield players in play, whilst you only have 9.

"Stats show that in 8 out of 10 of those throw-in situations, you lose the ball. In your half of the pitch, you should have the possibility to take a kick instead.”

Imagine Trent Alexander-Arnold putting the ball down on the touchline and spraying a 60-yard ball from his own half straight to Sadio Mane's toe? I'm for it.

 

The original interview was with L'Equipe but I can't find it in English anywhere.

[gunnar hendershow]

Anything to save us from 10 minutes of "was his right pinky fingernail offsides?!" IMO. It's like watching the NFL determine if a guy got his toe in the field of play at the 42 yard line.

[DFF]

If we're going to expierment with kick ins instead of throw ins, why not just make that the thing? Teams would have to think twice before hoofing a clearance into touch instead of, say, down the field. 

[METALMAN]

When we used to play football before covid we did the kick-in rule, but that was changed because I'm so damn good at dead ball situations (I'm not even kidding here, I actually am) that it would basically always be a guaranteed goal for my team because I played with one of those really tall spindly guys that would bop it in off his head.

[Adam]

Wenger has mentioned that before and honestly I think it's rubbish. It renders Offside almost useless, you can't have a "daylight" rule because then someone can be a yard or two ahead but have his arm trailing behind him and that would mean he's onside.

They just need to stop boiling it down to the nearest millimetre and stop drawing wonky lines on the screen to determine it. It doesn't need wholesale change.

[Colly]

Exactly. Wenger's rule doesn't remove the stupid "is he a public hair offside" scenarios, it just moves the line the other way. The offside rule itself isn't broken, just the use of VAR has completely erased it's purpose which was to stop strikers from goal hanging and replaced it with a weirdly tennis like line judge system which is plainly unnecessary. Just widen the lines on VAR to build some tolerance and you've fixed it. Surely that's better than enormously changing the rule and making it extremely difficult for liners below VAR level leagues.

I find the "who cares if it's shit if it means more goals" attitude baffling, that's the approach that's led to this massive increase in shit handball penalties. Yay, undeserved goals.

His other suggestions are just weird. Bring in extra time multi ball I say.

[DFF]

10 hours ago, Adam said:

Wenger has mentioned that before and honestly I think it's rubbish. It renders Offside almost useless, you can't have a "daylight" rule because then someone can be a yard or two ahead but have his arm trailing behind him and that would mean he's onside.

They just need to stop boiling it down to the nearest millimetre and stop drawing wonky lines on the screen to determine it. It doesn't need wholesale change.

Just to clarify, I think the spirit of the rule change wouldn't allow for an arm to keep you onside. It would be any part of you that can legally score a goal (at least, that's how it was interpreted elsewhere). More likely it would be trailing legs that they'd be looking at. 

[METALMAN]

They should just get rid of VAR and accept that mistakes are going to be made, we're only human, that's life, get on with it. At least in the pre-VAR days the post-match outrage could derive from a variety of issues and didn't always hone in on VAR.

[DFF]

I disagree. Whilst VAR has brought it's own issues, more decisions have been called right than wrong thanks to it. If anything, we should used VAR issues to highlights issues within the base set of rules. 

[METALMAN]

That's fair enough, and I wouldn't disagree with that point. But I also see football more as entertainment and something to talk about so the importance of getting everything meticulously right doesn't way too heavily on me. Huge referee mistakes can be a lot of fun, and it gives people something to talk about.

[Colly]

26 minutes ago, DFF said:

I disagree. Whilst VAR has brought it's own issues, more decisions have been called right than wrong thanks to it. If anything, we should used VAR issues to highlights issues within the base set of rules. 

I agree with this, but what I don't agree with is to change rules based on VAR, especially given in theory the rules of the game should be the same from World Cup Final to grassroots pub football.

They've already shagged that to an extent with the "keepers foot on the line for penalties" rule which I've no doubt will still be "keeper gaining significant advantage" further down the pyramid, but at least that's minor. For offside to be turned that much on it's head is just silly, pacey strikers don't need even more advantage.

[DFF]

I agree that the rules should be applicable throughout the pyramid. The idea is more that VAR should be used to correct mistakes. 

As for keepers foot on the line - refs are meant to check for that regardless of level of pyramid. VAR just makes it easier to catch someone that has jumped early. 

What I do think is that they can add it an element of 'if it takes longer than a few moments to process / evaluate, then it's too close to overturn whatever the original verdict was' with the exception maybe being for red cards. 

[Colly]

1 hour ago, DFF said:

As for keepers foot on the line - refs are meant to check for that regardless of level of pyramid. VAR just makes it easier to catch someone that has jumped early. 

That's true to an extent, but the law was previously the keeper "blatantly moving off the line" not "at least one foot must be in line at the time it's taken". It's a minor change, but in practice it meant the liner (who has moved slightly onto the field) was looking for keepers taking the piss, it's physically impossible for him to watch both ball being kicked and the goal line at the same time. Without VAR you can only ever use the original interpretation.

[Adam]

3 hours ago, DFF said:

Just to clarify, I think the spirit of the rule change wouldn't allow for an arm to keep you onside. It would be any part of you that can legally score a goal (at least, that's how it was interpreted elsewhere). More likely it would be trailing legs that they'd be looking at. 

My point stands regardless of which body part it is. If someone's trailing leg is the only thing keeping them onside in this rule, then it's unfair because the player will clearly have the advantage of being ahead of the last defender when the ball is played.

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Concussion spotters, whose job is to identify from the stands possible brain injuries, are to be introduced at the World Cup next year.

Spotters will work in conjunction with team doctors to help identify “red flags” of potential concussion that might have been missed, Fifa’s medical director, Andrew Massey, has said.

Whereas concussion spotters are standard in the NFL and rugby union, they have yet to be adopted across football and their use in Qatar will be a first at a major international tournament.

Massey, formerly the team doctor at Liverpool, took on his role at Fifa in March. He confirmed all Fifa tournaments would now have video replays for team doctors to study for signs of concussion among players, but also and the addition of spotters – medical staff who sit away from the dugouts.

Massey said it was easy for team doctors not to register key signs in the heat of the moment. “Often in football matches you miss these, even if you’re sitting on the front row,” he said. “You have people walking in front of you, you have the manager, you have the referee’s assistant, you have people warming up. So it’s easy to miss.

“All Fifa competitions will have video replays. All Fifa competitions will have concussion spotters in the stand who can go through all these things and relay information to the team benches if it is needed. It will just make things an awful lot safer.”

The permanent addition of spotters, previously trialled at Fifa’s Club World Cup, is likely to be welcomed by campaigners. It will also put the sport’s tardiness in dealing with the problem back into the spotlight. In the NFL, “ATC spotters” have been in the stands since 2012. Premiership Rugby introduced Hawk-Eye-assisted spotters in 2018. Though the Premier League was quick to take part in trials of concussion substitutes, on the grounds that “player welfare [is] the Premier League’s priority”, it does not have concussion spotters.

In an interview with Fifa’s in-house YouTube channel, Massey acknowledged team doctors were often put in challenging positions when diagnosing concussion, knowing a decision to remove a player could affect the outcome of a match.

He recalled Liverpool’s game against Newcastle in 2019 as being one of the most difficult moments in his career as a doctor, when he removed Mohamed Salah from the field for concussion. The forward subsequently missed the second leg of the Champions League semi-final against Barcelona.

“It would be remiss of me not to say that the thoughts of [the consequences] of taking him off went through my head,” Massey said. “We needed to win the match to win the league and we had the Champions League coming up. That went through my head. It shouldn’t have done because it was straightforward, but that was my experience.”

 

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Fifa is to explore the possibility of staging the men’s and women’s World Cups every two years after it was raised at the governing body’s annual congress on Friday.

Although a study does not guarantee the changes will be implemented, it will be seen by many as the latest action in a global struggle for control over the football calendar and likely to have a severe impact on regional tournaments such as the European Championship.

Speaking at the congress, the Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, said: “We have to go into these studies with an open mind but we are not going to take decisions which will jeopardise what we are [already] doing. We know about the value of the World Cup, believe me.

“I would like to put this discussion in a much broader context, that of the international match calendar. Are we really convinced that playing qualifying games [across the year] is the right way when we are saying that fans want more meaningful games? All these points have to be considered. But we will put the sporting element as the top priority, not the commercial element.”

No date has been set for the completion of the study.

Infantino also addressed the issue of the ESL and suggestions, articulated most bluntly by the head of La Liga, Javier Tebas, that he was ‘behind’ the plot.

“We should look at the facts and not rumours or corridor gossip, especially not coming from certain parts,” Infantino said. “I know many clubs, I speak with clubs for many years and when speaking with European clubs the Super league topic always is a topic for discussion; everyone in football knows that. Let’s not play games here.

“At Fifa it is my responsibility to meet and discuss with football stakeholders. Everyone, big, medium, small. It doesn’t mean in any way that Fifa was behind, was colluding, was plotting on any Super League project.”

The European governing body Uefa has announced it is to launch a “Convention on the Future of European Football”. Following the brief crisis in the game caused by the breakaway ESL, Uefa has pledged to call together stakeholders – from club owners to players, fans and agents – to discuss better governance for the game.

The convention will examine four main aspects of possible reform: financial sustainability; competitiveness and solidarity; good governance; and the development of women’s football.

Similar rhetoric formed a substantial part of Infantino’s address to Fifa’s 71st Congress, where other ideas mentioned included the possibility of salary caps and a cap on transfer fees.