Arsène Wenger’s ‘daylight offside rule’ is on trial in Canada. Will it work?

When Alejandro Díaz scored, he did not realize he was making history.

It was only hours after his club’s 2-2 draw with the Halifax Wanderers – a hard-fought match in which the Pacific FC striker grabbed the opener with a left-footed volley – that he learned that he had become the first professional player to score as a result of the so-called daylight offside rule.

Díaz plays in the Canadian Premier League, the first professional soccer league in the world to pilot the rule, which deems a player onside as long as some part of them, even a trailing foot, remains in line with the second-to-last defender. It’s a marked change from offside as it is currently called everywhere else – where an attacker cannot even be an inch ahead of that defender.

Supporters, players, coaches and Fifa officials are watching closely. Daylight offside has supporters and skeptics. If Fifa’s Arsène Wenger has his way, it may alter how the game is played everywhere, from the sport’s highest to lowest levels. The former Arsenal manager, now Fifa’s head of global development, has long advocated for the change as a way to drive scoring opportunities and limit the fine-margin offside calls that trouble referees and torment supporters. The Frenchman’s fondness for the idea is famous and long-running enough for some to call it the Wenger Law.

The CPL introduced the daylight offside trial in early April, when the league kicked off its eighth season. It will use it throughout the 2026 season, with the support of Fifa. Its commissioner, James Johnson, sees the league’s trial as a way of bringing clarity to one of the muddier parts of the beautiful game.

“Even for sophisticated football people, [offside] is a complicated rule,” said Johnson, a former professional footballer and Fifa executive.

Plus, giving attacking players an edge has its benefits. “There’s more goals,” he adds. “And that’s what fans like.”

Díaz, for one, is appreciative of the measure. The CPL’s all-time scoring leader has made a career of playing off the shoulder of defenders, hiding just out of sight.

“I love the rule,” Díaz told reporters in the week after his historic goal, “because it gives you a little more [of an] advantage to score … I don’t know for defenders, but for me, I think it’s a good rule.”

Mike Sweeney, a midfielder who represented Canada at the 1984 Olympics and 1986 World Cup, is “100%” in favour of the pilot, too.

“We don’t watch soccer games for [referees] to pull back goals because somebody’s shoelace was ahead of a guy,” he says. “That’s not the intent of the rule.”

Not all in the sport share the same enthusiasm: Though Fifa president Gianni Infantino has expressed his support for an offside overhaul, the International Football Association Board (Ifab), the body that determines the rules of the game, is noncommital on the matter. And then there are goalkeepers and defenders.

“There’s an art to being on the same line as a back line and stepping at the right moment so [your opponent] is offside, and now you’re losing that,” says Thomas Meilleur-Giguère, a veteran centre-back with the Wanderers. “It changes everything that I’ve been working on for the past 11 years as a pro.”

Costa Smyrniotis understands the reservations. The CPL’s executive vice president of soccer stepped into his role in 2023 after five years with Hamilton’s Forge FC, with a mandate to grow the game on and off the field.

“There’s always going to be challenges. That’s just the reality of the game,” Smyrniotis says. “Through a trial, you’re going to realize certain things that you thought were going to be correct, others maybe not so much and we can adjust … Ultimately, it’s Fifa’s trial.”

Johnson is not afraid of taking chances. In his first year leading the CPL, Johnson has introduced a flurry of other changes to speed up the game, from 10-second time limits on substitutions to five-second countdowns for throw-ins and corner kicks. Part of the daylight offside trial also includes the introduction of Football Video Support, or FVS, which gives head coaches two video review requests for “clear and obvious” errors in “match-changing incidents,” ranging from red cards to penalties to disallowed goals.

“It’s different, and it’s new, and it’s driving the industry forward,” Johnson says. “It’s created a lot of debate both here in Canada, but also abroad, and we think that’s really healthy for the league.”

One month into the season, the daylight offside rule has not yielded an onslaught of goals, with Díaz remaining the only player to have scored as a direct result of the change. The effects of FVS, meanwhile, have been more noticeable: After four match weeks, video review challenges have led to penalties, disallowed goals and, in one instance, a belated sending-off for Díaz’s teammate, Joshua Belluz.

“We’re not tied down by history to say, ‘We can’t do this,’ or ‘We’re worried what effect this will have on the history of our competition and the way we’ve always done things,” says Smyrniotis. “Everybody’s curious to see what takes place, what the outcomes are. It’s gone global.”

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