Fifa president Gianni Infantino had voiced support for the law change in an interview with British broadcaster Sky News last month.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a player covers his mouth and says something, and this has a racist consequence, then he has to be sent off, obviously,\u201d Infantino said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere must be a presumption that he has said something he shouldn\u2019t have said, otherwise he wouldn\u2019t have had to cover his mouth.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you do not have something to hide, you don\u2019t hide your mouth when you say something. That\u2019s it, as simple as that.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a separate law change announced on Tuesday to be enforced at the World Cup, Fifa said that red cards would also be introduced for players leaving the field of play in protest at a referee\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the discretion of the competition organiser, the referee may sanction with a red card any player who leaves the field of play in protest at a referee\u2019s decision,\u201d FIFA said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis new rule will also apply to any team official who incites players to leave the field of play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fifa said a team causing a game to be abandoned will forfeit the match.<\/p>\n
The move follows the uproar at this year\u2019s final of the Africa Cup of Nations, when Senegal\u2019s players, head coach Pape Thiaw and his staff walked off the pitch in Rabat after Morocco were awarded a penalty in added time, which forward Brahim Diaz ultimately missed.<\/p>\n
Senegal went on to win the final 1-0 in extra time, but were sensationally stripped of the title by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) in a bombshell decision issued last month.<\/p>\n
The law changes came as FIFA delegates gathered in Vancouver before Thursday\u2019s FIFA Congress, the final gathering of football\u2019s global governing body before the World Cup gets underway in Canada, Mexico and the United States in June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fifa president Gianni Infantino had voiced support for the law change in an interview with British broadcaster Sky…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402261,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[12067,1975,7800,10635,207409,207408,16123,10542,2837,1872,36862,96407,23807,207407,111,139,69,21941,5202,10702,42120,15406,3048,213,165,1865,1299,1533,102,377],"class_list":["post-402260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-aimed","tag-at","tag-body","tag-card","tag-combating","tag-confrontations","tag-cover","tag-cup","tag-during","tag-face","tag-fifa","tag-governing","tag-initiative","tag-mouths","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-opponents","tag-part","tag-players","tag-racism","tag-red","tag-said","tag-sports","tag-their","tag-today","tag-who","tag-will","tag-with","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}