FIFA’s new World Cup injury rule is under scrutiny after incidents in which treated players had to stay off the pitch for one minute.
A FIFA rule introduced at the 2026 World Cup to discourage feigned injuries and time-wasting is facing early scrutiny over a possible loophole: it can leave a team temporarily short-handed even when its player appears to have been hurt by an unpunished opponent.
According to a report by Varzesh3, the measure is tied to an amendment to Law 5.3 concerning referees’ authority in injury situations. If play is stopped so an apparently injured player can receive treatment, that player must remain beyond the touchline for exactly one minute after the match restarts before returning.
The purpose is clear enough. Football authorities have long tried to reduce dead time caused by players staying down to slow a match. But the concern raised by the report is that the rule does not separate simulation from a real injury caused by contact the referee failed to punish.
That creates a narrow but consequential problem. If the referee misses a foul, and the incident is not serious enough for the video assistant referee to intervene for a possible red card, the injured player’s team can face three consequences at once: the opponent is not punished, VAR does not correct the decision, and the team that lost the player must play with 10 men for one minute.
Varzesh3 cited several early World Cup examples. In France’s match against Senegal, the report said William Saliba stepped on Ismaila Sarr’s foot in a non-deliberate but forceful challenge that referee Alireza Faghani did not spot. After play was later stopped for Sarr to receive treatment, Sarr was required to stay off for a minute, leaving Senegal down a player during an attacking phase.
The same match produced another illustration late on, when the ball struck Kylian Mbappe in the face. The referee stopped play for his condition, and Mbappe also had to wait out the one-minute period before re-entering. Varzesh3 reported that Senegal came close to scoring while France were temporarily reduced to 10 men.
A third example came in Ivory Coast’s match against Ecuador, where the report said Moises Caicedo took a heavy blow from an opponent that French referee François Letexier did not judge to be a foul. Caicedo was then sent off the field for the one-minute interval under the injury rule.
The current exceptions, as described in the report, cover goalkeepers, collisions between teammates, incidents in which the referee shows a yellow or red card to the offending player, and penalty decisions. Those carveouts do not address a missed foul that falls below the threshold for VAR intervention.
One possible fix would be allowing VAR to alert the referee to an unseen foul so the injured player is not forced off. But the report notes the tradeoff: expanding that practice could invite players to go down after ordinary contact in hopes of triggering reviews, undermining the rule’s original aim of speeding up play.
So far, the temporary absences cited by Varzesh3 have not directly resulted in goals. The risk is that in a knockout match, a one-minute imbalance caused by an uncalled challenge could become decisive.
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