SAN FRANCISCO, August 04, (THEWILL) – Ahead of the 2020/21 Champions League campaigns, UEFA has announced changes to their rules which will become effective this weekend.
These changes, which have been approved by the International Football Association Board (IFAB), the football lawmakers, became official on 1 June 2020, which is the official start date of the international 2020/21-football season.
The changes will come into play for the remaining matches of the 2019/20 UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, UEFA Women’s Champions League and UEFA Youth League, and also for the 2020/21 club competition qualifying games, which will begin later this month.
One of the new rules is a change to penalty kicks which states that a goalkeeper will not be penalized if a penalty kick is missed or rebounds off the woodwork, unless the offence clearly affected the penalty taker.
According to the rule, the goalkeeper will be cautioned for a first offence but any further interference will attract a yellow card. Also, the taker of the penalty will be penalised if the goalkeeper and the taker is offended at exactly the same time.
Roberto Rosetti, Uefa’s chief refereeing officer, said: “In general, with the Laws of the Game, there are just a few minor changes.
“When the goalkeeper saves the kick [by encroaching], it’s not a caution for the first offence, but [the keeper] must be cautioned for any further offence.
“Most goalkeeper encroachment results from a mis-anticipation from the goalkeeper and small offences are now detected more with the technology, with the video assistant referee.”
THEWILL reports that apart from penalty situations being injected into the rules, changes are also being made about how the outcome of an encounter is determined.
For games that involved a penalty shoot-out to determine a winner, yellow cards that have been awarded in the 120 minutes that led to shoot-out will no longer be carried over.
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