The football calendar has been heavily affected by the Coronavirus pandemic. All sporting activities were suspended for 3-4 months, which lead to the congestion of the football calendar.
So the IFAB introduced the five-substitutions rule which will allow the team to introduce five substitutes in a match. This new rule was made to protect players from injuries as they will be playing many matches in a short span of time.
Last month, IFAB released an official statement. They wrote that they have come to this conclusion due to these reasons:
- Some competitions which resumed in 2020 may have a shorter-than-usual recovery/preparation period before the start of their next season.
- For many competitions, the 2020/21 season will involve matches being played in a condensed period due to a delayed start and the inability to end later than usual because of major international tournaments.
Read: LFP will allow 5 substitutions as the 2020-21 Ligue 1 season starts from 22nd August
Surprisingly, Premier League has decided against the rule. They implemented the five-substitutions rule in the COVID-19 affected 2019-20 season. But they have now officially announced that they will return back to the three-substitutions rule from the upcoming 2020-21 season.
The Premier League clubs met in a shareholder meeting on Thursday and 11 out of the 20 clubs have voted against the five-substitutions. The threshold value for a decision to be implemented is 14, so the vote was 5 short as only 9 clubs were in favour of the five-substitutions rule.
According to Telegraph Sport, opposition came from clubs outside the elite who felt it would hand an unfair advantage to those wealthier clubs with bigger squads.
The matchday squad has also been reduced to 18 from 20 after the voting was tied on 10-10.
Do check out:
