The international Football Association Board – the authority in charge of determining the laws of the game – have voted to update the handball rule.
IFAB confirmed that the rule now dictates that an accidental handball that leads to a team-mate scoring a goal or having a goal-scoring opportunity will no longer be considered an offence after their annual general meeting on Friday afternoon.
The decision comes just one day after the controversial decision to rule out Josh Maja’s ‘equaliser’ for Fulham against Tottenham at Craven Cottage due to a perceived handball by Mario Lemina in the build up.
In an official statement on their website IFAB confirmed that handballs will now only be given under certain circumstances.
These include when a player “deliberately touches the ball with their hand/arm, for example moving the hand/arm towards the ball” or when a player “touches the ball with their hand/arm when it has made their body unnaturally bigger.”
The statement went on to add: “A player is considered to have made their body unnaturally bigger when the position of their hand/arm is not a consequence of, or justifiable by, the player’s body movement for that specific situation.”
