In the latest attempt to cut down on time-wasting, goalkeepers will soon be allowed only eight seconds with the ball in their grasp. More than that, then the punishment will be a corner kick for the opposing team.
Trials across countries including England and Italy have prompted the game’s rule-makers, the International Football Association Board (IFAB), to change the current law that states that if a goalkeeper holds on to a ball for six seconds, then an indirect free-kick is awarded to the opposition. It is a rule rarely enforced.
The new rule will be implemented worldwide by 1 July. It will also be in place for the Club World Cup, which runs from 15 June to 13 July.
Goalkeepers will be warned by the referee when they have five seconds remaining to get rid of the ball. Referees will raise their arm and start a visual countdown with their hand.
One earlier football rule that changed, this one more than likely thanks to Egypt, came during the 1990 World Cup where Egypt were playing Ireland in the second game of the group stage. Egypt had held the mighty Dutch 1-1 in the opener but the energy exerted to draw with the European champions sapped them of their energy so much for game two that Egypt could only play with their defenders facing their own goalkeeper Ahmed Shobeir more than the goal at the other end of the field.
During most of the 90-minute play-by-play commentary, the broadcaster had these similar lines to recite:
“Ahmed Shobeir gives the ball to Hani Ramzi. Hani Ramzi gives the ball back to Ahmed Shobeir.”
“Ahmed Shobeir gives the ball to Ibrahim Hassan. Ibrahim Hassan gives the ball back to Ahmed Shobeir.”
“Ahmed Shobeir gives the ball to Rabei Yassine. Rabei Yassine gives the ball back to Ahmed Shobeir.”
“Ahmed Shobeir gives the ball to Hani Ramzi…” and so on and so forth.
Egypt’s non-playing, which ended in the most unimaginative of 0-0 draws, so exasperated manager of Ireland Jackie Charlton that after the game he had some choice words for Egypt:
“If you qualify for the World Cup, then you should play.”
“I hate to play teams like Egypt.”
“I’ve seen a lot of things in my life as a player and a coach but I never saw a team play 90 minutes without shooting even once.”
The rules at the time allowed Shobeir to handle the ball if it were passed back to him by a teammate with his feet. So, he and his merry band of backs did their version of the tango: two steps forward and three backwards. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
But two years later, in 1992, neither Shobeir nor any other goalkeeper would be allowed to handle the ball if it was back-passed to him deliberately by a teammate.
Now, there is no proof 100 per cent that this Egypt-Ireland half-game was the cause behind the rule change but a case could be made that the rule was made with the Egypt backpedaling fiasco at least in the back of the minds of the rule makers. Egypt’s defence so badly stilted the match that this give-and-give sort of playing was destined to stop.
Then there was Egyptian referee Gamal Al-Ghandour in the 2002 World Cup. The game he refereed, in which South Korea beat Spain 5-3 on penalties following a 0-0 in regulation time to reach the semi-finals, became known for the fury shown by Spain’s players over two controversially disallowed goals and that Ivan Helguera had to be restrained from Al-Ghandour at the end of the match.
The criticism levelled at Al-Ghandour was vehement. Same for questionable decisions in the Italy-South Korea match in the same World Cup which resulted in Italy’s elimination, followed by 400,000 email complaints against the referee of that game.
The effect of the officiating controversies in 2002 was to introduce a requirement that a referee and assistants come from the same country and speak the same language, should have worked together for at least two years, and need English proficiency to avoid communication errors. It became apparent that the inoperative mixture of an Egyptian, a Ugandan and a Trinidadian adjudicating the Spain-South Korea game may have cost Spain their elimination.
There was also to be an open discussion over the eligibility of referees from certain less-established footballing countries in future World Cups.
FIFA president at that time Sepp Blatter was livid with the «refereeing experiments.” “A World Cup that receives the best players and teams in the world should be overseen by the best referees regardless of their nationality,» Blatter said. “From now on we will call in the best, full stop, even if they come from just a handful of countries.”
(For the record, two years earlier, Al-Ghandour did not instigate a rule change but wanted to make history all the same. He had been so good at refereeing that he was the first non-European referee chosen for a European championship, in Euro 2000. In one match, when Norway beat Spain 1-0, in the 69th minute Al-Ghandour controversially penalised Norway’s goalkeeper Thomas Myhre for holding the ball for more than six seconds, which was the rule at the time. Norway successfully defended the resulting kick.
The point is that since the six-second goalkeeping rule was prompted in 1998, Al-Ghandour was obviously in much haste to enter the history books by becoming the first referee in Euro history to penalize a goalkeeper for holding the ball too long. He was too trigger-happy, though, for it did not look like Myhre held the ball for more than six seconds.)
As for today’s eight-second rule, there’s only around a four per cent chance of scoring from a corner so it isn’t that much of a punishment. It is also possible to foresee that referees will be very keen on it the first couple of weeks before it gets forgotten.
The last decade or two have seen major rule changes that were very significant. In fact, they have had profound effects on football: three points for a win instead of two points, from two to three to five substitutes, referees signaling how much extra time there is, and a player being onside as long as there is one opponent between the player and the goal-line. Previously, two opponents had been required.
It’s nice to know that Egypt could have played a part in a couple of historic football rule changes. Too bad what Egypt did to initiate those changes were not necessarily positive.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 20 March, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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