IFAB AGM in Belfast

Football's lawmakers, the International Football Association Board (IFAB) has confirmed the agenda for its 129th annual general meeting (AGM) in Belfast on 28 February.

The International Football Association Board is a body constituted by the national football associations of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and by FIFA, whose object is to discuss and decide proposed alterations to the Laws of the Game.

An item for discussion on the agenda is the so-called 'triple punishment' rule under the provisions of Law 12, where a player who denies an opponent a clear goalscoring opportunity in the penalty area, concedes a penalty, is dismissed and then is automatically suspended for a subsequent fixture.

The IFAB was requested by the UEFA Executive Committee to reconsider the stipulations in Law 12. The matter was dealt with by IFAB at its annual general meeting last spring, but no decision was made as it was felt that a more detailed assessment of the relevant situations should be made.

IFAB is being requested by UEFA at its 2015 AGM to consider removing the red card as an automatic sanction. The lawmaking body is being asked to take into consideration the difference that exists between plausible fouls committed while challenging an opponent for the ball, and fouls which are deliberately committed when there is no realistic chance to play the ball, including holding, pushing and pulling, with the main aim being to deny an obvious goalscoring opportunity.

IFAB is asked to confirm the latter case as a red-card offence, but to scale down the first case to a cautionable offence if committed inside the penalty box. If IFAB feels it is not ready to amend Law 12 at its latest meeting, a proposal has been made by UEFA for IFAB to authorise the testing of the amended law in its competitions from the 2015/16 season.

The issue of triple punishment has been widely discussed within football, and a considerable number of bodies and individuals across the game have expressed similar views to UEFA with regard to the severity of the law as it currently stands. These include the players' union FIFPro, various eminent coaches and senior refereeing officials, and the FIFA Task Force Football 2014, chaired by the former Germany captain and coach Franz Beckenbauer. The Royal Netherlands Football Association (KNVB) also created a file of relevant incidents from Dutch league football in which the rule's application provoked public discontent.

Another item on the agenda for the IFAB AGM is the deployment of so-called 'sin bins' – temporary dismissals from the field of play – in recreational youth football.

Recently, UEFA President Michel Platini spoke out in favour of temporary sendings-off for players who breached rules of respect and fair play by, for example, criticising referees, play-acting or showing poor conduct. Players, said the UEFA President, could be shown a 'white card' that would lead to a player being sin-binned for a given amount of time, for example, five or ten minutes. The white card would not be confused with the yellow card given by referees for cautionable offences.