Yellow card is warning, red is sending off. Two yellow cards automatically turn into red. Almost every fan knows about these rules, but not everyone knows that the cards are a relative new phenomenon in football and until 1970 the referees penalized players verbally that sometimes led to a misunderstanding between the referee and the players.

The most memorable example of misunderstanding that eventually pushed the football authorities to change was the quarterfinal match of the 1966 World Cup between the teams of England and Argentina, which was judged by the German referee Rudolf Kraytlyan, who could speak only German. The game from the first minutes was dirty, and players  provoked each other, and the Argentinean Antonio Rattin was often running behind arbiter expressing his dissatisfaction with the refereeing. At the 35th minute of the match after warning Argentine player, Rattin again spoke to the judge, who although  understood nothing from his speech, but decided to send off Rattin, who ... did not leave the field. And in order to Rattin still left the field referree had to call chairman of the judging committee Ken Aston who fortunately was present at the match. By the way, the whole story with sending off lasted 10 minutes, during which the Argentines did not understand Kraytlyan, he did not understand the Argentines, and the audience did not understand anything of what was happening on the field.

After this incident Ken Aston thought about introducing changes that would avoid misunderstanding between referees and players in terms of penalizing. According to legend, the idea of ​​their visualization came to Aston when he was waiting at an intersection in anticipation of a green signal, thinking that yellow and red colors would be a good tool for signaling the punishment of players.

FIFA authorities supported the proposal of Aston, and  cards debut took place at the World Championships in 1970 in Mexico. Soviet football player Kakhi Asatiani became the first player to have a yellow card. It happened in the opening match between Mexico and the USSR.