"If 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's nothing I personally like." Leeds boss Daniel Farke said that about Gianluigi Donnarumma last season. Apparently, the rule-makers were listening.
From 2026-27, every level of professional English football — Premier League, Championship, WSL, FA Cup, Carabao Cup, League One, League Two, the National League — will trial a new law designed to stop goalkeepers using feigned injuries as a free timeout. The entire English pyramid has volunteered for the experiment. No other major European league has.
What the new rule actually does
Once a referee signals for medical staff to treat a goalkeeper, the manager has 10 seconds to tell the fourth official which outfield player will be temporarily removed from the pitch for one minute after play resumes. Fail to name someone in time, the captain goes. If the goalkeeper is the captain, the pre-nominated outfield representative takes the hit instead.
There are carve-outs. No player gets removed if the goalkeeper was fouled, if there was a collision with an outfield player, if there's visible bleeding, if it's a concussion, or if the goalkeeper himself waves away the physio. Gaming those exceptions will become its own minor sport within weeks.
The rule is pending IFAB sign-off. If approved, the first match it applies to is Tranmere vs. Rochdale in the Carabao Cup preliminary round on August 1. Arsenal's home opener against newly promoted Coventry City on August 21 becomes the first Premier League fixture to carry the new law.
Will it actually change anything?
Probably less than the chaos merchants are predicting. Cast your mind back to the eight-second ball-holding rule. Burnley's Martin Dúbravka got pinged on opening weekend last season, and then referees collectively agreed to look the other way for the remaining ten months. The deterrent did its job; enforcement faded.
This rule will likely follow the same pattern. One unfortunate goalkeeper goes down with genuine cramp in August, his manager panics, a right-back sits on the touchline for sixty seconds, and suddenly every goalkeeper in England develops miraculous injury resistance for the rest of the campaign.
- The rule applies across the Premier League, Championship, League One, League Two, National League, FA Cup, Carabao Cup and WSL
- It will not apply in the Champions League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A or Ligue 1
- Australia's A-League is also trialling the rule — but with no player nomination, it's always the captain who is removed
- IFAB approval is still required before any of this goes live
From a tactical standpoint, the most obvious losers are sides that rely on a sweeper-keeper deep in a game — losing an outfield player for a minute while protecting a narrow lead is a genuine risk calculation. Those odds on clean sheets and low-scoring matches in early-season fixtures just got a fraction harder to price confidently.
Farke wanted education. What he got was legislation.
