Football lawmakers to make substitutions change after Premier League agreement

The number of substitutions allowed in football matches will increase from three to five as part of a change to the rules of the Beautiful Game.

The International Football Association Board (IFAB) will ratify the adjustment during a meeting in Doha, the capital of Qatar, on Monday. The five substitutions rule was originally introduced in May 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Premier League then reverted to only allowing three subs, becoming the only major competition to do so.

In a fresh development, the IFAB has decided five substitutes should be allowed on a permanent basis and will alter the laws of the game to reflect this. This comes three months after Premier League clubs voted to reintroduce the rule, starting from the beginning of the 2022/23 season.

The IFAB states the substitutions can be made on three occasions during a fixture, with the exception of half-time. Teams can also made a sixth change if a match goes to extra-time. The use of five substitutes has been a controversial topic in the past.

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp and Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola are keen advocates of the rule but other teams in the Premier League with smaller squads claimed it would give the biggest clubs an unfair advantage. Former Burnley boss Sean Dyche led the protests against five substitutes and clashed with Klopp over the issue on numerous occasions. However, the German and Guardiola have succeeded in their bid to reintroduce the measure, which is aimed at increasing player welfare.

Elsewhere, football's lawmakers will hold further discussions about concussion substitutes and the use of semi-automated offside technology. Concussion substitutes have been trialled, while the innovative technology was in use during the Club World Cup, which Chelsea won earlier this year. It uses 10 dedicated cameras and 50 television cameras to collect vast numbers of data points for every player, aiming to expedite tricky offside decisions.

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The technology could be used at the World Cup in Qatar this winter but Pierluigi Collina, chairman of FIFA's referee committee, insists it cannot be boiled down to "robot offside". Speaking in February, the Italian former match official said: "We're continuing a test to try to achieve the objective: to have more accurate decisions and also quicker decisions in offside incidents.

"Someone called it robot offside; it's not. The referees and the assistant referees are still responsible for the decision on the field of play. The technology only gives them valued support to make more accurate and quicker decisions, particularly when the offside incident is very tight and very difficult."