Referees at the World Cup have new rules to whistle during games 12%
By Russell Lewis0%
6/13/2026, 2:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 17 faulty reasoning types, including Status Quo Bias, Attempt to Sell a Product or Service, and Halo Effect, with Optimism Bias as the most egregious example at 27.6% saturation with 82 hits. Analysis detected 481 faulty-reasoning hits from 297 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 29% and a BS Rank of 12% (19,259 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 88.00% of the article peer group.
LOS ANGELES — The referees chosen to work the 2026 World Cup have some new tools to speed up the games and ensure that any match-altering officiating mistakes are corrected.
Among the many changes that fans will see during the World Cup:
* A substituted player must exit the field within 10 seconds.
If there's a delay, the team plays a man down for at least one minute before the replacement can enter the field.
* There are now five-second countdowns for goal kicks and throw-ins.
The team ahead at the end of a game is often slow to put the ball back in play.
If a goalkeeper or defending player takes too long on a goal kick, the referee could award a corner kick to the other team.
Likewise, if a player deliberately delays a throw-in, the opposing team could be given the throw-in instead.
* VAR, the video assistant referee, will have more opportunities to review calls during the game.
These include the proper awarding of corner kicks, analysis to determine whether a player was in an offside position and a review of a second yellow card resulting in the send-off of a player.
The chairman of the FIFA Referees Committee, Pierluigi Collina, has long focused on time-wasting during games.
At the last World Cup, four years ago in Qatar, he ensured that stoppage time was properly added during the competition.
Some 90-minute matches saw as much as a half hour of added time.
There's another technological improvement that viewers will notice at this World Cup: Officials will wear an eye-level video headset, so fans can see a replay of the action as the referee saw it during key decisions.
Copyright 2026 NPR
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