Canadian League to Trial Arsene Wenger's Revolutionary Offside Rule

The Canadian Premier League is set to trial Arsene Wenger's "daylight" offside rule. It was presented to the International Football Association Board (Ifab) at its annual business meeting on Tuesday. It will now go forward to the annual general meeting in Cardiff on 28 February. If approved, the trial will begin when the Canadian Premier League kicks off in April. Wenger, who has been Fifa's head of global football development since 2019, proposes that there should be a complete gap between the attacker and the second-to-last opposition player - effectively the last defender, given the goalkeeper's usual positioning. Critics have suggested that daylight offside will give too much advantage to the attacking team. "We have to try the radical solution first and see if we need to come back from that," said Wenger when he left Tuesday's meeting in London. It was first suggested six years ago but so far there have only been limited trials in youth football. If the trial in Canada goes ahead, its results will be presented to Ifab at the end of year. If successful, there is the potential for the law to change across the world for the 2027-28 European season. Other leagues are set to be invited to take part in the trial. It is likely Ifab will want multiple tests to show the change is robust, especially as the Canadian league does not have video assistant referees (VAR). Before the Ifab meeting it was expected that the trials of "daylight" offside would be ditched in favour of "torso" offside, which ignores arms and feet when making a judgement. However, there was opposition to this idea and it is now unlikely to go to trials. Ifab placed a particular focus on lost time at Tuesday's meeting and three ideas were approved that are set to feature at the World Cup. In what could be a huge change to speed up player behaviour, a countdown will be applied for players taking goal-kicks or throw-ins. If a player takes too long, possession will switch. So a goal-kick could become a corner, mirroring the countdown when a keeper is holding the ball. Two other suggestions that have been trialled successfully in Major League Soccer are set to be added to the laws too. It was agreed that a substituted player must leave the field within 10 seconds. If they fail to do so, the replacement player will not be able to immediately enter the field, and the team must play with 10. Players who go off injured will also have to stay off for an extended period. It is 30 seconds in the Premier League, which is a competition regulation. It will be enshrined in law, with the exact time to be determined. In Major League Soccer, it is two minutes. Ifab technical director and former Premier League referee David Elleray said the limit on goalkeepers holding on to the ball showed "if you have a strong deterrent, you can change player behaviour". He added: "We want to apply that principle of changing player behaviour to speed up the game because we're aware that adding time on doesn't stop the main purpose, which is tempo disruption. "We're aiming to reduce the number and the length of stoppages by having effective deterrents."