Pierluigi Collina unveils 11 Wc 2026 rule changes
FIFA has unveiled 11 wc 2026 law changes, the most for any World Cup, as Pierluigi Collina pushes to speed up matches and cut errors that can change results. The package reaches into VAR, time-wasting and substitution behavior, with most of the changes set to move into the next season in the Premier League, English League Cup and Scottish Premiership.
Collina's speed plan
Collina, FIFA's head of refereeing, has spent years targeting time-wasting, and this set of rules puts that aim into the tournament itself. At World Cup 2022 in Qatar, officials were told to add every stoppage back into added time, and the opening matches all ran past 100 minutes.
England's 6-2 win over Iran at that tournament included 24 minutes of added time across both halves. FIFA now wants players to get the ball back into play faster, and the new package is built around that demand.
VAR and the restart clock
Under the changes, a deliberate delay on a goal kick can be punished by turning it into a corner for the opposition. The same delay on a throw-in can hand possession to the other side, and referees will start a public five-second count when a player takes too long to restart play.
Goalkeepers face a tighter eight-second count after catching the ball, with the referee using an up-and-down arm motion to show the limit. The move is meant to deter keepers who slow the game late on, when the old remedy was usually just a yellow card.
That old warning system had a weakness: if a goalkeeper kept wasting time, a second yellow and a dismissal were hard to produce. FIFA's version puts a clearer clock on the restart, and it gives officials more direct tools to deal with delays before they drain more minutes from a match.
Substitutions in 10 seconds
There is also a stricter substitution rule. If a player leaving the field does not get off within 10 seconds at the nearest point, the substitute must wait at least one minute before entering and the team has to continue with 10 players.
That is the sharpest sanction in the bundle, and it adds a real cost to slow walks to the touchline. For clubs that will see these rules first in domestic competition, the practical instruction is simple: restart quickly, leave quickly, and do not test the referee's stopwatch.
