The Canadian Premier League (CPL) will become the first professional competition to stage an official pilot of the alternative offside law during the \u20602026 season.<\/p>\n
The revised interpretation, proposed by former Arsenal manager and current FIFA Chief of Global Football Development Arsene Wenger, is aimed at boosting attacking play and improving the flow in competitive matches, the league said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Under the new approach, an attacking player will be ruled offside only if there is \u200cclear gap, or “daylight”, between \u2060the attacker and the defender, meaning the attacker will be considered onside if any part of the body that can legally score is level with or behind the second-to-last defender.<\/p>\n
“This is an important pilot,” Wenger said.<\/p>\n
“By testing this new \u200cinterpretation in a professional competition, we can better understand its impact, including in terms of improving \u2060clarity and the flow of the game and promoting attacking \u200cplay.”<\/p>\n
The CPL said the trial will be conducted in close \u2060collaboration with \u200cFIFA, which will oversee the research and evaluation framework, while working with Canada Soccer to prepare match officials, players and clubs.<\/p>\n
“This is about positioning the Canadian Premier \u2060League at the forefront of innovation and contributing meaningfully to the global \u2060evolution of the game,” said James Johnson, commissioner of the Canadian Premier League and group CEO of Canadian Soccer Media & Entertainment.<\/p>\n
Alongside the offside experiment, the CPL will also introduce FIFA-designed and IFAB-approved measures, including Football Video Support, aimed at cutting down time-wasting and improving \u200cmatch efficiency.<\/p>\n
Watch Republic of Ireland v North Macedonia on Tuesday from 7pm on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player. Follow our live blog on RT\u00c9.ie\/sport and RT\u00c9 News app.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Canadian Premier League (CPL) will become the first professional competition to stage an official pilot of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-374514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}