Is there a need to increase the number of substitutions in modern professional football?

Abstract

Football is the most important and popular sport in the world, being influenced by several aspects and generating a billion dollar financial income. The constant scientific advancement of the modality allows a rapid evolution of football, being important to constantly review aspects of its dynamics and, consequently, its laws. The aim of this work is to analyze and argue, based on several aspects, e.g., evolution of the modality, physiological aspects, incidence of injuries, relationship with the media and economic aspects, etc., if there is a need to increase substitutions in modern professional football matches. In order to achieve this objective, a wide bibliographic research on the most important aspects of football was used.. As demonstrated throughout the text, according to the constant changes that have occurred in various aspects related to football over the years, there is a need for changes in the regulations to meet the need and provide a greater evolution of the modality. In this way, we believe that the increase in the number of substitutions can be very beneficial for football in general, mainly to make the modality more dynamic and attractive to the spectators.

The Five-substitution Option Enhances Teams’ Running Performance at High Speed in Football

“…Despite the calendar of professional football has returned to certain normality in the following 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 seasons, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) has extended the five-substitution option to all football competitions since 2020 [13]. Interestingly, the view that this provisional modification of the "Law 3-The players" should be maintained as permanent has been recently proposed [2,14] or even the suggestion of the convenience of an unlimited number of substitutions per match [15]. The potent economic revenues of professional football makes difficult to reduce the number of matches played by each football team during the season as football is one of the most watched sporting events in the word.…”