by Martin Rødvand on March 5, 2011
On their Annual General Meeting in Wales today, the Ifab approved the use of additional assistant referees in the Euro 2012 competition. The use of additional assistant referees has been restricted to club competitions until now.
The International Football Association Board also approved various amendments to the Laws of the Game. These amendments will come into effect on July 1st 2011.
While most of the amendments clarifies already present text, the amendment to Law 2 – The Ball includes an important change, albeit it being a very rare situation. The old text stated that the referee should restart play with a dropped ball if the ball bursts, with the new text stating that should this happen during a penalty the penalty should be retaken.
The Ifab also extended the period for reviewing goal line technology after none of the current ten technologies fulfilled the criteria as set out by the Ifab last year. This is in stark contrast to the Ifab’s definite no to technology last March.
Their next Annual General Meeting will be in England between 2 and 4 March 2012.
by Martin Rødvand on March 6, 2010
On today’s post-IFAB press conference it was made very clear that goal-line technology is not being implemented anytime soon. While the decision was not unanimous the board agreed to not pursue the use of technology in any aspects of the game.
While the technology question was the most controversial, the IFAB made a number of other decisions to improve the game of football.
The decisions regarding Law 12 (fouls and misconduct) and Law 14 (penalty kick) where the discussion would be about the triple punishment when denying an obvious goal-scoring opportunity and players feinting when taking a penalty was not resolved today.
The board decided to discuss these issues further on 17-18 May. The meeting will also take a decision on the Additional Assistant referees experiment and discuss the role of the fourth official.
The International Football Association Board consists of four football associations (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) and FIFA. All decisions made by the board must be approved by at least six votes, where each association has one and FIFA has four.
