A former referee looked for how to make clear the warnings: his wife cut out some cards. They premiered in Mexico 70.

<center>Ken Aston was the referee of the most unpleasant game in the history of the World Cup, the Chile-Italy of 1962. </center>

It was for the memory as the battle of Santiago. The cause was a very contemptuous chronicle towards Chile (as a country, not as a selection) published by the Bolognese newspaper Il Resto del Carlino, with the signature of Corrado Pizzinelli, who traveled a month before the championship to make a note of the atmosphere. I have read it and the truth is that it was aúpa.

Chile and Italy coincided in group II. They met on the second day. By then the chronicle of a month before had arrived at El Mercurio, the great newspaper of Chile, which reproduced it. Chile had made a great effort to carry out this World Cup despite a tremendous earthquake a year earlier, to give a good image to the world. That chronicle created a colossal indignation.

<center>Aston suffered trying to arbitrate an infamous battle.</center>

He tried to calm the players, but they did not understand him. He expelled two Italians, he failed.

<center>He left frustrated.</center>

For the next World Cup, England 66, he was retired, in the FIFA Arbitration Commission. Presented the famous England-Argentina in which the German Kreitlein expelled Rattin, by repeated protests. That created a stir. Rattin had been warned, according to the referee, to reoffend in the protests. But Rattin only spoke Spanish. How would I know what Kreitlein was saying? Aston himself, who had seen Chileans and Italians, unable to warn them, went down to the field to mediate. English was not as understood then as today, converted into a lingua franca.

The next day he was in his office in Wembley when Jackie Charlton called.

<center>A newspaper had published that he and his brother Bobby had been warned of expulsion. They did not know and wanted to certify it.</center>

Aston went home thinking about the need to create an easy, international, undoubted system, so that the players warned by the referee knew, and also the spectators, so that there would be no doubt. Standing at a traffic light in Kensington, he thought:

"It should be something as clear as this: yellow, prevention, red, forbidden to pass ... But how? If it were as easy as putting a traffic light with lights in the field ...! ".

He arrived home and explained his concern to his wife, Hilda, who seemed not to attend to him. Then he started reading the newspaper.

<center>After a while, Hilda appeared before him. He had cut two pieces of cardboard, one yellow and one red, and showed them: "What if the referees had two of these in their pockets? The yellow as a warning and the red to eject. " </center>

Aston was happy with the idea and after many discussions and some trials went into full operation with the law in the 1970 World Cup, in Mexico.

The first came already in the opening match, Mexico-USSR, on May 31, 1970. The German referee Tschenscher showed the Soviet Astiani, by a hard entry on the local player Velarde, 27 minutes into the match.

(Years later, a brief teletype reported that Kaji Astiani, 55, the first footballer to see a yellow card, had died violently in Tbilisi. After leaving football he had been for a while director of the Georgia Department of Sports. He was machine-gunned by two strangers who were waiting for him in a car outside a meeting, and they never showed up, a crime of so many in the convulsions that followed the fall of the old communist world and the ensuing struggles. of power).

The first red in a World (that not the first expulsion, already in 1930, first, there was) saw Caszely, Chilean, also before the premises, the RFA. It was shown to us by our well-known Babacan, for revolting against the hardness of his marker, Vogts. He felt unfair.

<center>To Spain they arrived with the season 70-71 already in march. The Federation introduced them on January 15, 1971.</center>

Here, by the way, the yellow card arrived as white, an initiative of the then Secretary of the Federation, Andrés Ramírez, which was for a quarter of a century. He feared that on the screen of our old black and white televisions, which were still a majority, the yellow ones could be confused with the red ones. That with white and red there would be no doubt. The yellows came here for 76-77.

In principle, who would tell us now, our arbitrators were reluctant to show them.

<center>The ice broke Pelayo Serrano, on February 14, in an Atlético-Español that came out very hard. At 28 'he showed white card to Amiano</center>

Near the rest, he expelled Adelardo and José María, for mutual aggression.

<center>He removed the card so nervous that it fell to the ground, from where Martinez Jayo picked it up to deliver it to him.</center>