According to the Athletic (subscription required), the International Football Association Board (IFAB) are set to extend the use of the rule that allows five substitutions for the entirety of next season.
After world football’s top leagues were all suspended for a considerable period of time due to the Coronavirus pandemic, it made sense to increase from the usual three substitutes to combat injuries.
The Athletic claim that IFAB will announce the decision to extend this ruling in the ‘coming days’. When this was proposed, each league was allowed to determine whether or not they’d like to implement it.
It’s added that four Premier League sides rejected the proposal back in June, of course the rest of the league were fine with the change so it’s been in use ever since.
With this rule to stand for the whole of next season (2020/21), teams that have deeper squads will be licking their lips as they’ve been handed a potential advantage.
Whilst some teams with thinner squads could be hurt by the decision, there could be a silver lining in that youngsters from sides like that will have the opportunity to test themselves when they otherwise wouldn’t have.
It’s certainly surprising to see that this rule will be extended, we’d have though that IFAB would wait to see how pre-season for sides works out before making this decision.