The Football Association have confirmed that they want to trial video assistant referees from the third round of next season’s FA Cup.
The announcement came at the International Football Association Board (IFAB) annual meeting on Friday and it wasn’t only further video technology that was discussed by the rule makers.
They also spoke about the introduction of a fourth substitute for extra time in this year’s FA Cup and even how they felt there was a ‘clear advantage’ to the team who took the first penalty and how they wanted to investigate that further aswell.
With talk of sin bin introductions for yellow card offences further down the footballing levels, that illogical idea has now been approved as has the proposal for rolling substitutions to ‘encourage more people to take part’ in youth and amateur leagues.
The sin bin and rolling substitutions will come into play from June apparently.
Chairing the meeting was FA chief executive Martin Glenn and a strategy was also agreed to improve player behaviour on the back of the proposals to only allow captain’s to talk to the referee when it came to ‘major incidents’ in the future.
With the substitution proposal already agreed for this season, Glenn is quoted by the BBC as saying he feels it will add ‘extra intrigue and interest’ to the ties moving forward.
‘From a technical point of view, it will be interesting to see how managers use the chance to make an additional substitution in such high-profile games and the impact it has on the final result.’
FIFA president Gianni Infantino was also at the meeting and he stated that ‘the aim, the objective’ was to introduce video referees for ‘match changing’ events at the World Cup in Russia.
The system has been tested in six countries so far, Italy took on a closed trial for this season last summer from memory and it’s also featured in the third tier of the United Soccer League and in the Dutch Cup, as well as international friendlies between Italy and France in September and Italy and Germany in November.
It was also trialled in the Club World Cup in December.
No doubt more details about the various proposals will be covered over the weekend and next week.
