Canada’s new offside rule has already led to a goal: ‘That’s what fans like’

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 fired the opening salvo with a left-footed volley in the Wanderers’ six-yard box, that he learned that, with his goal, Díaz became the first Canadian Premier League (CPL) player to score as a result of the so-called daylight offside rule – which, in turn, made him the first professional player anywhere to claim the honour.

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

Supporters, players, coaches and Fifa officials alike are watching closely. Daylight offside has supporters and skeptics across soccer’s global governing bodies. If Fifa’s Arsène Wenger has his way, it might 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 76-year-old 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. It’s commissioner, James Johnson, sees the league’s daylight offside trial as a means 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 Australian 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, he has made a career of playing off the shoulder of his 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.”

Longtime Canadian international Mike Sweeney, a midfielder who represented Canada at the 1984 Olympics and 1986 World Cup, is “100 percent” 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 said. “That’s not the intent of the rule.”