page_title: Fouls and misconduct (association football)
section_title: History and origin
hierarchical_section_title: Fouls and misconduct (association football) / Misconduct / History and origin
caption_attribution_description: English: Antonio Rattin (#10) being sent off by the referee Kreitlein during the match between the national teams of Argentina and England.
context_page_description: In the sport of association football, fouls and misconduct are acts committed by players which are deemed by the referee to be unfair and are subsequently penalised. An offence may be a foul, misconduct or both depending on the nature of the offence and the circumstances in which it occurs. Fouls and misconduct are addressed in Law 12 of the Laws of the Game.
  A foul is an unfair act by a player, deemed by the referee to contravene the game's laws, that interferes with the active play of the game. Fouls are punished by the award of a free kick to the opposing team. A list of specific offences that can be fouls are detailed in Law 12 of the Laws of the Game; these mostly concern unnecessarily aggressive physical play and the offence of handling the ball. An infringement is classified as a foul when the infringement meets ALL of conditions of: 1) It is committed by a player, 2) on the field of play, 3) while the ball is in play and 4) committed against an opponent. For example, a player striking the referee or a teammate is not a foul, but is misconduct.
  Misconduct is any conduct by a player that is deemed by the referee to warrant a disciplinary sanction.
context_section_description: The practice of cautioning and excluding players who make serious breaches of the rules has been part of the Laws of the Game since 1881.
  However, the practice of using language-neutral coloured cards to indicate these actions did not follow for almost 90 years.
  The idea originated with British football referee Ken Aston. Aston had been appointed to the FIFA Referees' Committee and was responsible for all referees at the 1966 FIFA World Cup. In the quarter finals, England met Argentina at Wembley Stadium. After the match, newspaper reports stated that referee Rudolf Kreitlein had cautioned both Bobby and Jack Charlton, as well as sending off Argentine Antonio Rattín. The referee had not made his decision clear during the game, and England manager Alf Ramsey approached FIFA for post-match clarification. This incident started Aston thinking about ways to make a referee's decisions clearer to both players and spectators. Aston realised that a colour-coding scheme based on the same principle as used on traffic lights (yellow - caution, red - stop) would traverse language barriers and clarify whether a player had been cautioned or expelled. As a result, yellow cards to indicate a caution and red cards to indicate an expulsion were used for the first time in the 1970 FIFA World Cup in Mexico (though no players were sent off in that tournament). The use of penalty cards has since been adopted and expanded by several sporting codes, with each sport adapting the idea to its specific set of rules or laws.
caption: Antonio Rattín (#10) being sent off in the 1966 World Cup. The use of red and yellow cards was not adopted until the 1970 World Cup in Mexico
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