Been watching some of the World Cup games, and I’m not following the penalty system. What is a yellow card? a red card? why is extra time sometimes added? how can you end up playing a man short - aren’t substitutions allowed?
any elucidations would be most welcome.
Each team starts the game with 11 men.
You are allowed to exchange 3 players per match. Once a player has been subsitituted he is not allowed to return to the pitch.
A yellow card is shown as a caution - for an offence of foul play or unsportsmanlike conduct.
If you received two yellow cards you are shown a red card, and dismissed from the field.
The team would then be down to 10 men. You may use substitutes as before, but you have to stay with 10 men. The idea is to punish the team for a player’s bad behaviour.
If an offence is serious enough, a red card will be shown directly.
Extra time is used in knock-out competitions where the score is tied after 90 mins of play. Extra time lasts for 2 x 15 min periods. If the score remains tied, a penalty shootout takes place.
A yellow card is a “caution” - awarded against a player who commits a bad foul, or argues too much with the referee or otherwise offends against the spirit of the game. Two of these in one game and you get sent off; two in different games in the same tournament and you miss the next game.
A red card means instant dismissal from the field.
Extra time is added if the scores are level after 90 minutes and a draw is not acceptable (i.e. a knockout tournament).
If a player is sent off he may not be substituted, so his team end up playing a man short. Substitution is allowed otherwise, but not for this.
Yellow card is a warning. In the WC, two yellow cards to a single player causes that player to be suspended for the next I believe. Often these are issued when players tackle an opponent without going directly at the ball.
Red card indicates an immediate ejection.
Extra time is called “stoppage time.” It is added to the end of a half to make up for play stoppage time due to injuries and penalty kicks and whatnot.
In the WC, 3 substitutions are allowed for each team in one game. Red carded players cannot be replaced, however. Injuries occuring after the 3 subs have been used can also cause a shortage in players.
No, not in the World Cup. Draws are acceptable in the first round. In the elmination rounds, the teams have penalty kicks at the end of the game to break the tie.
for the next game…rather
Where did I say that draws were unacceptable in the first round of the WC?
In the elimination rounds, it’s normal time, then extra time, then penalties.
This does not explain stoppage time added at the end of the first half and end of the game (see my post above). Also, stoppage time is added regardless of whether or not the score is tied.
Extra time is not the same thing as stoppage time.
The term “extra time” refers solely to the 30 minutes added on after normal time (plus stoppage time) has run out and the scores are still level.
Stoppage time is added only for the benefit of clock watchers, the reason being that official time is kept on the field and the clocks are continuously running approximations. Without that there would be no stoppage time.
I don’t think (I could be wrong) the OP was familiar with the term “stoppage time” when asking the question. I assumed he was asking about stoppage time since every WC game has at least a little bit of stoppage time. Not every game has “extra time,” but it was important that you made this distinction.
And I assumed the OP meant the 30 minute extra time (probably because of the words “sometimes added”)
Glad we got that sorted out.
If I’m interpreting your location correctly, Northern Piper, you’re Canadian. Or, more relevant here, North American; most of the sports that dominate the market here have somewhat similar approaches to timekeeping, substitution, and player ejections that soccer does not share. Hence the frequent confusion.
As others have said, a yellow card is a formal warning for unsporting conduct (which includes but is by no means limited to excessively rough play). A red card is an ejection; it may stem from a single serious violation, but is also an automatic consequence of a second yellow card within the same game.
Red cards or accumulated yellows across multiple matches usually result in suspensions from subsequent games, but the details of this are left up to the particular league or tournament in question (the Laws of the Game are silent on this).
When a player is red-carded from a soccer game, he may not be replaced on the field. This is completely different from ejections in football, baseball, basketball, and hockey, and is a frequent source of confusion among North American viewers.
Soccer allows much more limited substitution than the Big Four North American sports. Of those four, only baseball stipulates that a player may not return after leaving the game, and all four allow full use of a roster of players more than double the size of the on-field contingent. Hockey even allows substitution while the puck is live.
In World Cup soccer, a team may use only three(?) substitutes; once they’re used up that’s it. Even if a player is injured and unable to continue, his team must play a man short. As in baseball, once a player is substituted out he may not return to the game.
Baseball is untimed, of course, but in football, basketball and hockey the official time is kept on the scoreboard clock; when it hits 0:00 the period is over. Soccer, not so much. Official time is kept on the field by the referee, and the stadium clock simply counts upwards from 0:00 without stopping. If there’s a delay in the proceedings (injury, etc.) the referee will effectively stop his own watch while things are sorted out. This means that the half will almost always extend beyond 45:00 on the scoreboard clock; this additional play is referred to as “stoppage time.”
“Extra time,” as you can see, has a very specific meaning in soccer and stands for something else. 
Specifially, it’s what a North American sports fan would generically think of as “overtime,” although soccer doesn’t call it that. Depending on the rules of the league or tournament, a soccer game may be called a draw if the score is tied at the end of the second half, or they may play extra time.
The phrase “extra time” actually means “overtime”. I think what you’re talking about is “stoppage time” or “injury time”, the time added to the end of each regulation period of play, which ArchitectChore explained. The Brits and such who told you it was an extra period of play after a tie were confused at your wording.
As brad_d said, it may help to know that what you on the right side of the pond call “extra time”, we call “overtime” (not necessarily in soccer, but in all the other sports we watch). So a non-soccer-fan over here would have no idea that the words “extra time” would mean anything specific in the context.
thanks for the replies, everyone, and sorry for the confusion about the time vocabulary. I just meant that I’d seen games go past the 90 minute mark. The commentators would rarely comment on it, so I didn’t know where that time came from, and called it “extra time.” I had no idea that was a technical term. I was trying to avoid “overtime” which is a technical term over here.
This seems to be a holdover from days gone by. It would be quite easy with current technology for the referees to start and stop the stadium clock from the field, or to automatically sync up the stadium clock with a small clock carried by the ref.
Wouldn’t this be an improvement? I imagine people would want to keep it the old way just because it’s traditional, but it seems like it would be more exciting for the fans if they knew exactly how much time was left.
On the contrary, it’s much more exciting when you don’t know.
In big matches, yes, but one of the principles is that all official matches, from the World Cup down to small amateur leagues, are officiated in the same way.
What fetus said.
Oh, and the fact that the ref can choose to not add on spells of timewasting, or of simple dawdling, keeps the game moving. If the clock always stopped, you’d end up with protracted tactical discussions about free kicks and corners, goalkeepers taking forever over goal kicks (to give their players a few minutes break), and so on.
One reason refs may decide to not blow the whistle exactly when their watch says the 90 minutes are over is if there is an attack going on (gramps is a ref and says it’s perfectly legal).
My home team used to have a gift for being 1-0 pretty early… 1-0 at midtime… 1-0 at minute 88… and then the opponent scores in minute 89, right before the ref blows the whistle. Or minute 94 - ARGH! Did we have that much stopover? Darnit, are you sure the ref didn’t overcount or something? Yeah, well, I know the ref’s the ref and if he says the ball’s still in play it still is, but…
Made for several interesting, heartbreaking, heartburning years.
Whether an attack’s on or not should be irrelevant in trms of the referee’s decision to blow the whistle when he considers time (including stoppage time) is up.
It happened when I was a toddler, but my Dad often talks about a Welsh referee called Clive Thomas, who was one of these dreadful officials who wanted to be the centre of attention (like most Welsmen 
and he actually blew for full time in an English League match when a player was shooting. A second later and the ball was in the net - and disallowed. Bedlam followed, predictably enough.