IFAB is trialling a rule to stop goalkeeper time-wasting: treat a keeper, lose an outfield player for a minute. This is how it will work in England.

IFAB’s new goalkeeper rule: why faking an injury could soon cost your team a player

Goalkeepers going down clutching an ankle, physio’s jogging out, teammates gathering round for a drink and a quiet word from the manager, it’s become one of football’s most reliable momentum-killers. From next month, IFAB is trialling a fix, and it hits where it hurts: numbers on the pitch.

What the trial actually changes

Whenever a referee allows a physio onto the pitch to treat a goalkeeper, the opposing side’s advantage disappears, and the treated team now pays a price too. The manager has 10 seconds to tell the fourth official which outfield player is leaving the field for one minute. Miss that window, and the captain goes instead by default.

England has adopted this “nominated player” version across the EFL, FA competitions, the National League, the Premier League and the WSL. IFAB approved a second variant too — the captain always leaves, no manager’s choice involved — which Australia’s A-League will trial instead.

Why this, and why now?

The trigger point was hard to miss. In November, Leeds boss Daniel Farke openly accused Manchester City’s Gianluigi Donnarumma of feigning injury during a Premier League match City went on to win. Farke’s response summed up the sport’s discomfort with the tactic: within the rules, smart, but not something he would defend on fairness grounds. IFAB flagged its intent to act back in February but held off approving any trial until after this summer’s World Cup, where FIFA Referees Committee chairman Pierluigi Collina had already told officials to stop players wandering to the touchline during keeper treatment. Pro Ref — the body most recently known as PGMOL — worked through both trial options with the FA and the leagues before England settled on the nominated-player route.

Where coaches will find the gaps

Rules built around a 10-second decision and a manager’s discretion tend to get managed, not obeyed. Expect the nominated player, in practice, to often be whoever was already due a rest or a substitution that half — the cost gets absorbed by someone who wasn’t doing much anyway. The bigger opening is the exemption itself: any collision, foul, or hint of concussion voids the outfield penalty entirely, and referees will now face constant, immediate pressure from benches to classify borderline knocks as contact rather than fatigue or gamesmanship. The rule doesn’t remove the referee’s judgment call from the equation — it just raises the stakes riding on it.

What happens next?

The trial starts across English football next month. IFAB has left the door open to writing this permanently into the Laws of the Game for 2027-28, if the numbers hold up. Whether it actually kills the goalkeeper timeout, or just moves the gamesmanship one step upstream to how injuries get described in real time, is the question worth watching for.