Link: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7237831/2026/04/28/world-cup-mouth-covering-red-card/

The Gianluca Prestianni-Vinicius Jr incident earlier this year sparked debate over the practice in football.

Something about this doesn’t taste right. Including ejecting players for walking off the pitch seems unrelated, and like it’s trying to suppress other kinds of speech. Covering your mouth to hide speech seems like it has legitimate sporting reasons. And why only limit it to the World Cup?

FIFA is expected to introduce new rules that could see red cards issued to players who cover their mouths in situations of confrontation with an opponent at this summer’s World Cup.

World football’s governing body is also set to instruct the tournament’s match officials to send off anyone who leaves the pitch in protest at a decision they have made.

This development follows a special meeting of IFAB, the game’s lawmakers, in Vancouver ahead of the FIFA Congress in the same city on Thursday and, as it stands, will not be implemented in any other competitions.