Rule changes to watch out for in 2025 soccer seasons

The high school soccer season starts this week with teams kicking off their seasons. The Creston Panthers, who have three Nodaway Valley girls on their roster, begin Thursday with a home match against Oakland Riverside and a trip to Iowa Western Community College where they’ll play St. Albert Friday. The Panthers have a tournament at Lewis Central Saturday.

There are four new soccer rules teams and fans will have to keep track of this season.

The first change has to do with overtime as no overtime will be allowed for any regular season match at any level, except if it is a bracketed tournament where a team must advance. In this case, the match would go immediately to penalty kicks to determine which team advances. Postseason matches will have overtime, if needed, to determine a winner with two 10-minute periods followed by penalty kicks if the tie still remains.

The running clock rule changes, now allowing the clock to run continuously before halftime if a team is up by 10 goals.

Weather delays are a third area of change as now teams will not be allowed to start or re-start a match over three hours after the originally-scheduled time. For example, a game scheduled for 7 p.m. can now not start or resume after 10 p.m. If one team leads and it is mutually agreed upon to end the match, as long as one half has been played, the game can be considered complete.

The last change is when a player receives a yellow card, they have to exit the game and be substituted, but they can re-enter on the next legal substitution opportunity rather than have a 5-minute sitting-out period. This rule is in line with the National Federation of State High School Associations standard.