First-Round Cards In World Cup Germany 2006

FIRST-ROUND CARDS IN WORLD CUP GERMANY 2006

A study by Orion & Zazu
July 4, 2006

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS

During the 48 First-Round matches of FIFA World Cup Germany 2006, referees issued a total of 259 cautions (yellow cards) and 18 expulsions (red cards or send-offs), both apparently World Cup records for the First Round. Five of the send-offs were straight red cards, all of which were deserved by the players who received them. The other 13 were due to a player being issued a second yellow card. Despite the higher number of cards, 11 of 32 nations (10 of whom advanced to the Round of 16) finished the First Round with no player having been shown either a straight red card, a second yellow card in the same match, or two yellow cards in different matches.

While referees were apparently given instructions to penalize yellow-card offenses such as Delay of Restart (10%) and Dissent (9%) more strictly than they typically do in professional play, most of the yellow cards (78%) were issued for types of Unsporting Behavior, and most of those for reckless or tactical challenges -- the offenses for which yellow cards are usually given at all levels of the game. In fact, 82% of First-Round cards were shown for actions which would also earn cautions or send-offs in professional league play, with only 18% for actions that probably would not.

Correspondingly, 22 of the 26 (85%) players who sat out one game due to card violations would have sat out in professional league play as well, because their cautions or send-offs were for actions that would have been similarly punished in professional play. The other four received their “World Cup guidelines” caution in their first match and went on to commit a clear and unquestionable yellow-card foul in a subsequent match. Only 2 of 13 players sent off for second yellows within the same match might have remained on the field in another professional match.

INTRODUCTION

The day Spanish referee Luis Medina Cantalejo awarded a game-determining penalty kick against Australia for a foul during the final seconds of extra time in its Round of Sixteen match against Italy, Associated Press writer John Pye gathered every possible complaint about the FIFA World Cup Germany 2006 refereeing into one long story. On June 27 it was printed in newspaper sports sections across the United States under headlines such as Controversy Centering On Man In the Middle.

While Pye’s article touched on some controversial decisions by individual referees, such as the penalty kick which sent Australia home, the general theme of its criticism was quantitative not qualitative and repeated the media mantra of the last few weeks -- too many yellow and red cards. He wrote:

“All the coach wants is that we have coherent refereeing,” France coach Raymond Domench said. Instead, players and coaches complained and the number of bookings piled up as matches became more tense…Never have so many red and yellow cards been doled out at a World Cup -- and that’s with two weeks left…After 54 of 64 matches the results [are] staggering: 24 red cards, 298 yellow cards, both World Cup Records.

In response to this and similar articles, we offer a closer study of the red and yellow cards issued in the First Round, also known as Group Play or Stage One, of World Cup 2006.

As a reminder, the First Round involved each of the 32 nations playing three matches, one against each team in its group of four -- 48 matches in all. During those 48 matches, referees issued a total of 259 cautions (yellow cards) and 18 expulsions (red cards or send-offs). Thirteen of the expulsions were due to a player being issued a second yellow card. The other five were straight red cards.

The number of cautions in our study differs from the official FIFA totals by one. We believe that all three cautions issued to Croatia’s Josip Simunic in Match 44 should be included, even though the official match report fails to include the second. This decision gives us a total of 259 cautions rather than the official 258. We have only included one red card for Simunic in our totals, not two.

THE RED CARDS

There were a total of 18 players sent off in the First Round. The Laws state that a player is to be sent off and shown the red card for any of these seven offenses:

1. Engaging in serious foul play
2. Engaging in violent conduct
3. Spitting at an opponent or other person
4. Denying the opposing team a goal or obvious goal-scoring opportunity by deliberately handling the ball
5. Denying an obvious goal-scoring opportunity to an opponent moving towards the player’s goal by an offense punishable by a free kick or penalty kick
6. Using offensive, or insulting or abusive language and/or gestures
7. Receiving a second caution in the same match

Two of the red cards were for similar incidents of Denial of Goal-scoring Opportunity. In both cases an attacker’s shooting foot was taken out from behind in the penalty area by the second-last defender. Those fouls were committed by Ukraine’s Vashchuk (Match 15 ESP-UKR) and Czech Republic’s Ujfalusi (Match 26 CZE-GHA).

Three red cards were for Serious Foul Play. They included a fast and extremely dangerous cleats-out tackle from the front with excessive force, a deliberate elbow in the face, and a dangerous cleats-out slide tackle from the side, above the opponent’s ankle. Those fouls were committed by Serbia & Montenegro’s Kezman (Match 21 ARG-SCG), Italy’s De Rossi and the United States’ Mastroeni (both in Match 25 ITA-USA).

Slow-motion television replays from multiple angles fully support these five red-card decisions by the referees.

[The fact that the last two red cards were issued in the same match -- a match which also featured a well-deserved send-off of U.S. player Eddie Pope for two cautions -- was briefly an “issue” in the U.S. media, who remain largely ignorant of the world’s game and were whipped into a frenzy by biased former U.S. players who now serve as commentators for Disney/ABC/ESPN, one of whom, Eric Wynalda, stated after the match, “There are, in my opinion, two kinds of referees -- bad and worse.”]

The other thirteen red cards of the First Round were issued for a player receiving a second caution in the same match, so discussion of those decisions will be part of our discussion of the yellow cards.

THE YELLOW CARDS

There were 259 cautions issued in the First Round. The Laws state that a player is to be cautioned and shown a yellow card for any of these seven offenses:

1. Engaging in unsporting behavior
2. Showing dissent by word or action
3. Persistently infringing the Laws of the Game
4. Delaying the restart of play
5. Failing to respect the required distance when play is restarted with a corner kick or free kick
6. Entering or re-entering the field of play without the referee’s permission
7. Deliberately leaving the field of play without the referee’s permission

Here is the breakdown of the 259 cautions issued in the First Round, according to our analysis:

FIRST-ROUND CAUTIONS BY TYPE

1. Unsporting Behavior, all types 202 (78%)
Dangerous or reckless challenge 110
Tactical challenge 55
Deliberate handling of ball 11
Holding of an opponent 8
Simulating action to deceive referee (“dive”) 6
Dangerous use of elbow/arm 4
Other unsporting actions 8

2. Dissent, all types 24 (9%)
Word and/or gesture 13
Action (kicking ball, etc.) 11

3. Persistent Infringement of Laws 3 (1%)

4. Delay of Restart (all types) 27 (10%)
Opponent’s restart 17
Own restart 10

5. Failure to Respect the Distance 3 (1%)

6. Entering/Re-entering 0
7. Leaving 0

It went unmentioned in the press that, despite a supposed rash of yellow and red cards, eleven of the 32 nations managed to finish the First Round with no player on their rosters having been shown either a straight red card, a second yellow card in the same match, or two yellow cards in different matches. They were Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, England, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Ten of the eleven (all but Saudi Arabia) made it to the Round of Sixteen, indicating that the accumulation of cautions was not a necessary requirement for advancement.

PRIOR PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS

Since the 2002 World Cup we have watched three seasons of European professional football, two of those as referees, so we have reasonably good idea of what kinds of challenges, actions, words and gestures are typically sanctioned with a yellow card. Almost three-fourths of the 736 players who appeared in the 2006 World Cup play professionally for a European club, so most are quite familiar with European refereeing.

In reviewing each of the yellow or straight red cards issued in the First Round, we believe that 216 (82%) of the cards were shown for actions which would also have earned cautions in the English Premier League -- the European professional league with which we are most familiar. Perhaps as many as 48 (18%) of the cards were for actions that would probably not earn a caution in the Premier League.

The 48 cautions we felt probably would not have been issued in the English Premier League in recent seasons generally fell into the categories of Dissent, Delay of Restart and Failure to Respect the Distance (which we believe are among the special areas of interest designated by FIFA for the World Cup 2006 referees). In our analysis, all but a handful of the unsporting behavior cautions, which constitute 78% of the total yellow cards issued in the First Round, would be given at any level of the game, from youth play to professional.

PLAYERS WHO MISSED MATCHES

For all the talk in the press about unnecessary cautions and players sitting out of matches undeservedly, we saw few if any suggestions as to which cautions should not have been issued or which players deserved to be on the field after two cautions in previous matches.

[According to tournament rules, a player who received a red card -- either straight or for two yellows -- in a match or two yellow cards in different matches was required to sit out their next match.]

Twenty-six players had to sit out either one of their First-Round matches or their Round-of-Sixteen match, due to having been shown a red card or having been cautioned in two of their previous matches. Of these 26, we find that 22 would have sat out in professional league play as well, because the cautions or send-offs were for actions that would have been similarly punished in the players’ home professional leagues.

These twenty-two were Angola’s Andre, Australia’s Emerton, Ivory Coast’s Drogba, Croatia’s R. Kovac, Czech Republic’s Ujfalusi, Ghana’s Gyan, Muntari and Essien, Iran’s Nekounam, Italy’s De Rossi, Japan’s Miyamoto, Mexico’s Perez, Poland’s Sobolewski, Serbia and Montenegro’s Koroman and Kezman, Togo’s Abolo, Trinidad & Tobago’s John, Ukraine’s Vaschuk, Siverskyi and Rusol, and United States’ Mastroeni and Pope.

Ghana’s Essien deserves special mention, because his first yellow was issued for a challenge involving Czech Republic’s Nedved in which we felt neither player had clearly committed a foul. On the other hand, Essien’s second yellow (for an unsporting challenge on United States’ Reyna) was clearly deserved. Regardless of the merit of his first card (which hinges not on a question of enforcement guidelines, but on the referee’s judgment in the moment, from his position on the field), it is hard to have much sympathy for a professional player who has one card and commits a reckless challenge knowing the consequences.

The other four players may have been surprised in their first matches by the level of enforcement for actions they often get away with in professional play: Czech Republic’s Lokvenc and France’s Abidal both received cautions for kicking the ball in dissenting action following foul calls against them; Togo’s Romao dissented a referee’s call in words and gestures; and France’s Zidane took a direct kick before the restart whistle (unsporting behavior). However, all four went on to commit yellow-card challenges in a subsequent match. In other words, like Ghana’s Essien, these four deserved to sit out for their actions, given their experience as professionals and knowledge of the consequences.

SECOND YELLOWS

Of the thirteen players sent off for second yellow cards within a single match, we find that eleven would have received both cautions in European professional play and therefore would have been sent off anyway, regardless of the special instructions to referees in World Cup 2006. These were Angola’s Andre, Ivory Coast’s Domoraud, Croatia’s Simic and Simunic, Czech Republic’s Polak, Mexico’s Perez, Poland’s Sobolewski, Togo’s Abalo, Trinidad & Tobago’s John, Tunisia’s Jaziri and United States’ Pope.

Only two players were sent off for second yellows who might not have been sent off in another professional match. Both players -- Australia’s Emerton and Serbia & Montenegro’s Nadj -- were involved the same match: Croatia-Australia (Match 44). It was the third match for both players, by which point the refereeing standards of the tournament were apparent. Also, in both cases the “World Cup guidelines” card for delay of opponent’s restart was issued first and their other caution second (for Emerton, deliberate handling to break up a play; for Simic, a reckless challenge), meaning that each player took a calculated risk in committing a foul he knew carried a high probability of expulsion from the match.

REFEREE DECISIONS

A separate issue is whether, upon review of all 259 yellow-card incidents, we agreed or disagreed with the referee’s decision. In 232 of the cases (90%) we were in complete agreement with both the foul call and the decision to issue a caution. This is remarkable, given that we have the benefit of slow-motion replays from multiple angles, while the referee observes an incident at full speed, from one vantage point, and has only a moment to process the information and make multiple decisions concerning the foul and its punishment.

We disagreed with the remaining 27 cautions issued for one reason or another. In all but a few of these 27 cases, the referees in question might well agree with us, given the same benefit of slow motion replays from multiple angles. For the rest, it would probably come down to a difference of opinion about fouls. Referees are all going to have slightly different opinions, and we are no exception.

Here’s how the 27 break down:

In one instance, we feel that a dangerous two-footed challenge by Ukraine’s Rusol, which simultaneously caught Spain’s Del Horno above the ankle and thigh (in 17’ of Match 15 ESP-UKR), should have earned Rusol a red card send-off for serious foul play, rather than just a caution for unsporting behavior.

In six instances, we felt a foul had definitely been committed by the penalized player but that the action did not require a caution for unsporting behavior. In two instances, we thought a foul had probably been committed by the penalized player, but that a card was not necessary.

In eighteen instances, we felt that no foul had been committed by the penalized player. We determined -- with the help of replays -- that in twelve of these instances, the referee’s decision was likely affected by a deliberate simulation (“dive”) by the player who had supposedly suffered the foul.

Two unique situations involving the documentation of cautions in the official match reports should be mentioned. In Match 44 (CRO-AUS), referee Graham Poll issued a second caution to Simunic (Croatia 3) for an unsporting challenge in 91’ but failed to show him the red card and send him off until 93’ when Poll showed Simunic a third yellow card after the conclusion of the match (this time for dissent) followed by a red. The second caution is mysteriously absent from the match report.

In Match 22 (NED-CIV), the official match report shows a caution issued to Landzaat (Netherlands 6) while he was definitely not the player shown the card by Oscar Ruiz in the aftermath of the unsporting challenge. In fact, he was nowhere near the vicinity when the foul occurred. This must have been a clerical error by the fourth official and not corrected by the referee following the match. Landzaat is shown in television coverage beside the referee when he is issuing the caution to a player just off-camera; we are fairly certain the player in question is Boularouz (Netherlands 3). Fortunately this mistake did not have any consequences for the status of either Dutch player in later matches.

BOOKINGS BY TEAM

Let us now examine Pye’s statement that “the number of bookings piled up as matches became more intense.” His implication is that teams generally earned more yellow cards per match in their second and third matches of the first round. There were 72 yellow cards issued in the 16 first games for each team. The second games involved 93 yellow cards and the third games involved 94. At first glance it would appear that Pye is correct.

However, his conclusion is not supported by closer scrutiny. Of the ten teams that were issued their greatest number of cautions in their third match only Croatia, Korea, Mexico and Switzerland were playing for a chance to advance to the Round of Sixteen. The other six (Ivory Coast, Costa Rica, Spain, Serbia & Montenegro, Poland, and Portugal) had their fates determined before their third match.

Nine teams earned their greatest number of cautions in their first match. Of these, only Argentina, England, Italy and Togo had their fates determined before their third match. Australia, Czech Republic, France, Japan and the United States were fighting to stay alive in their third matches, and yet were issued fewer cautions than in their first.

The thirteen remaining nations were issued the greatest number of cautions in their second match, with the United States and Japan being issued the same number in their first and second, and then fewer in their third than in either of the first two.

FINAL OBSERVATIONS

A misperception we encountered in the media was that there were “new rules” in this World Cup, and that large numbers of the cautions were being issued for violations of those rules. In our opinion, what the referees did in the First Round of World Cup 2006 was simply to enforce the Laws of the Game consistently and as written.

While cautions for reckless, dangerous or tactical challenges are enforced similarly at all levels of the game, from youth play up to professional matches, players at the highest levels get away with certain actions that are -- in print at least -- clear infringements of the Laws.

It is sometimes frustrating to us to return home from a day of refereeing in which we have sanctioned a youth player for dissent or refusing to give the required distance on a free kick only to watch a professional match in which a player clearly swears at a referee or stands on a ball outside the area to prevent a quick restart with impunity.

In the First Round of World Cup 2006, by contrast, when a player continued to play the ball after an offside call was made against him, kicked the ball out of bounds in anger at a call against his team or approached a referee waiving his arms and shouting, he was shown a card for dissent. When a player picked up the ball to prevent an opponent from taking a quick kick or a goalkeeper took an inordinate amount of time to set the ball for a goal kick in the final minutes with his team in the lead, he was shown a card for delay of restart.

Historically, those who say that these deliberate unsporting tactics are “part of the game” have had a point, but we hope that the consistency of the refereeing in the World Cup Germany 2006 shows that this can change. As referees and as fans, we applaud the new guidelines and their success in bringing fairness to many closely-contested matches and a new standard of sporting behavior to the highest levels of the “Beautiful Game”.