The Spanish league rejects the "Vinicius law" and applies strict rules
La Liga is bracing for a new season packed with refereeing changes. The technical refereeing committee wants to boost effective playing time, make matches faster and more fluid, and clamp down hard on anything designed to run the clock down.
Some of these tweaks arrive off the back of the World Cup. Others land in Spain with a few differences, but the aim is the same: referees will target time-wasting and punish anything that breaks up the flow of a game.
A source from the technical refereeing committee told Spanish newspaper "Marca": "Everyone hopes that common sense will prevail in order to apply the new rules."
New penalty for delaying substitutions
Deliberately dawdling off the pitch during a substitution now sits high on the list of offences under scrutiny.
Take longer than 10 seconds to leave, and your replacement won't come on straight away. He'll have to wait for the first stoppage after a full minute of effective time has elapsed.
Feigning injury triggers a different mechanism. A player who fakes a possible injury will be told to leave the pitch, and can only return after a minute has passed from the following stoppage, with no need to halt the match again for his comeback.
Goalkeepers under the microscope
Keepers who feign injury to stop play and waste time will draw particular attention from the refereeing committee.
If the referee decides the injury is fake and the stoppage was deliberate and unnecessary, the coach must pick one of his own players to leave the pitch within 10 seconds.
Ignore that decision and the captain becomes the man forced off.
The committee says that once a referee spots signs of deliberate time-wasting, he can start a 10-second countdown and then apply the penalties and procedures laid out in the new rules.
No red card for covering the mouth
Spain, by contrast, has chosen not to apply one of the more contentious recent clauses: the option to send off players who cover their mouths while speaking to opponents, dubbed the "Vinicius law" by the media.
The rules set by the International Football Association Board "IFAB" let each competition decide whether to apply it. The Spanish refereeing committee has opted out at domestic level.
The committee's officials explained: "For us, covering the mouth will not be a red card. We do not know what the player said to his opponent, and we believe that sending him off would be unfair and excessive."
