Updated Premier League laws and rules for 2024/25 season

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A few tweaks have been made ahead of the new campaign.

2024-08-15T11:10+01:00

There are updates around penalties for the forthcoming campaign. 📷 by Paul Hazlewood.

The Premier League have made some updates to the laws and rules of the game ahead of the new 2024/25 season.

Changes to Laws

There have been some tweaks made to the Laws of the Game by the International Football Association Board (IFAB).

Firstly, in Law 12 on fouls and misconduct, there is a clarification introduced that non-deliberate handball offences for which penalties are awarded are to be sanctioned in the same way as fouls which are an attempt to play the ball or a challenge for the ball.

In short, referees will not automatically show a yellow card to players who have handled the ball and conceded a penalty.

Then around the penalty kick itself, or Law 14, a couple of changes have been made.

Firstly, there is a clarification that when the penalty-taker places the ball, part of the ball must touch or overhang the centre of the penalty mark.

Secondly, encroachment by players at the moment the penalty is taken will be penalised only if it has an impact, following the same philosophy as goalkeeper encroachment at a kick.

So, for a defender, his encroachment will be relevant only if he either has an impact on the kicker or, in the event that the ball rebounds into play, prevents a goal or prevents a goalscoring chance.

For an attacker, his encroachment is relevant only if he impacts or distracts the goalkeeper, scores a goal or creates a goalscoring chance.

The encroachment at a restart such as a penalty is determined by the feet or any part of the player’s body that is touching the ground.

Subs warming up

A slight tweak is that from this season, the number of substitutes allowed to warm up at the same time on the perimeter of the pitch during a match has gone up from three to five players per team.

This is to correspond with the fact that teams are able to make five substitutions at any one time.

Multiball

As before, the Premier League will practice the multiball system in 2024/25, with 15 balls in use to speed up the game.

When the match ball goes out of play and is not quickly retrievable, players must go to the nearest cone to collect a replacement ball themselves to restart play.

Ball assistants are not permitted to return a ball to a player but should return it to a vacant cone.

But from this season, an exception to this rule has been introduced in that the ball assistants positioned behind the goals at the end where the ball goes out are allowed to return a ball to the goalkeeper who will take the restart.

It remains the case that a club’s technical area staff who deliberately delay the restart of play by holding on to the ball, kicking the ball away, etc will be sent off. Any players who do the same in the technical area will receive a yellow card.

More accurate calculation of added time

From this season, when a goal is scored, match officials will only start adding time on to the end of the match when the delay between the goal and the subsequent kick-off exceeds 30 seconds. This will allow natural time for both teams to resume their restart positions after each goal.

Given that there were 3.28 goals scored per match last season on average, this change may result in a significant drop in stoppage time this season.