Not quite - a single red card is a sending-off, and a single yellow is a caution. You get a red card either for a foul so egregious it makes the baby Jesus cry, or if you get two yellow cards in a single game. It’s impossible to get two red cards in one game, although I think Lee Bowyer has tried. 
Nope (and it’s not a red card, just a suspension - you can only receive a card during play).
Oops. I meant two yellows. I used to play in high school, and led my team in yellows my junior and senior year. I know from yellow.
I just didn’t know about whether the second yellow in group play got you sent off in that game.
Yes, for that match. You can’t bring on a substitution to replace a sent off player, which creates the interesting situation when a goalkeeper is sent off of the coach substituting a field player out for the sub. goalkeeper so they have a decent keeper (as opposed to having a field player play in goal, which does happen if the coach has used all his substitutions).
I’m not certain if this is an actual rule, but in practice if one team recieves so many red cards that they’re down to 7 men, the match is usually forfeited and the opposition wins.
Exactly. I don’t think soccer will ever catch on in the US until they start making the clock go the correct way and stopping it every time the whistle is blown.
While we’re asking dumb newbie questions, here’s one: When a team scores and starts celebrating, is there anything that prevents the other team from running up the field (“pitch”, right?) and scoring themselves? Of course it would be bad form, but is there any practical problem?
You’re disagreeing with that Dead Badger said.
It’s not like basketball.
They restart from a set ball at midfield when all the players are re-situated.
Yes, the ball is out of play until the game is restarted with a proper kick-off.
The commentator in the first match gave the explanation that one of the extra referees is a head ref, and one is a linesman. He mentioned that a game had been played where one of the linesmen was hurt, and the 4th official had to sub in, but had never called lines before.
I think Revenant read your question as asking whether a player who is sent off can be replaced (because of the “if so” part of your question 2). They can’t, but it remains the case that a player receiving 2 yellows in different matches is not sent off.
Okay, here’s one: why is Serbia and Montenegro abbreviated “SCG”? Shouldn’t it be CSG (“can’t score goals”)?
I think the blatant “diving” will have a lot to do with football’s failure to take off in some markets. Before Australia played Japan the Japanese team management complained about the Australian team’s aggressive play. Although Australia’s coach, Dutchman Guus Hiddink, angrily pointed out that it was an attempt to influence the referee it worked anyway. The Japanese players just hit the dirt even if a clean tackle took the ball off their feet and far too frequently they were rewarded. Had Australia not staged their miracle comeback in the last 10 minutes I think many Aussie observers would have been bemoaning what a crap game soccer is.
Most Aussie sports fans follow Rugby, Rugby League or Australian Rules. In each of those games players can be subject to real physical abuse, not a tap on the ankle, and they are expected to shrug it off and get on with the game. The exception is when they get up and take the law into their own hands and exact retribution immediately.
Otherwise known as “The Juggernaut, Bitch”
While we are here, can I get folks opinion on whether this “good sportsmanship” of kicking the ball out when an opposing player is writhing around on the ground is a good idea? I think the players should just play and let the referee decide when he play should be stopped. If a team wants to kick a ball out for their own player then I don’t think they should necessarily get it back either. Tnis practice is fairly recent, if I recall.
IIRC, the rules are ambiguous, with only the size of the teams at start of play being a minimum of seven.
Yes, it’s a good idea. Otherwise a blatant foul causing an injury could benefit a team and allow them to score against ten men, even if a player subsequently receives a yellow card (imagine if this happened in the last minute of a final). The problem with saying ‘the ref should stop play’ is how do you restart? Normally play only stops because of a foul or because the ball goes out of play.
I do think the attitude of footballers towards the ref is one of the big turn-offs in the game. I don’t think there’s any sight more despicable than when a player has taken a tumble (genuinely or not) and you see his team-mates crowd the ref with raised arms, gesturing to demand that their opponent receives a red card. I’d love to see more yellows given for dissent - there simply isn’t any point to allowing back-chat, since the ref’s decision is final. Start sending players off for mouthing off and you’d soon see some more obedience.
You don’t see any (well, hardly any) of this in rugby, for example; compare and contrast the histrionics that accompany any refereeing decision in football with the Scott Murray incident in the Scotland/Wales match a few months ago. Hit with a late tackle from behind by a Welsh player, Murray kicked out while on the ground, catching the tackler lightly on the head. Inevitably, he received a straight red card, but instead of screaming about it, he said to the ref, “sorry sir,” turned to the player he kicked and apologised again, shook hands and walked straight off the pitch. Not in a million years would you see anything like that in football, and I think the game would be transformed by that sort of behaviour.
The practice of kicking the ball out has been around for ages, but it’s getting more common in large part because players have started to exploit it and stay down when they fail to draw a foul, for example. As a result, what used to be a sporting gesture is now a bone of contention, with the team in possession feeling forced to kick the ball out even when they suspect they’re being messed around. Yeah, it’d be better if the refs stopped play for injury more often, but they tend not to and in any case, the effect then would be much the same - a faking player could disrupt the possession of the other team just as much, and there’d probably still be pressure on the other team to put the ball out if the ref decided not to blow the whistle.
But if it’s a foul by the scoring team, the ref should have blown for it, and if it’s by the injured player, then the scoring team deserves advantage.
You take a drop-ball from the location of the ball when the ref stopped play. This has already been done a few times in this World Cup; typically the drop isn’t contested, and the ball is returned to the team in possession when play was stopped.
A ref can, and will, stop a game for an injury without the ball going out of bounds. Play is restarted with a drop ball from the spot where the ball was at the time he stopped play.
Contrary to popular belief and normal action in amatuer/youth games, if the goalkeeper has the ball in his hands and the ref blows the whistle for an injury (or other non-foul reason, ie. dog on the field, lightning, alien attack) play should be restarted with a drop ball wherever the keeper was standing with the ball* - the goalkeeper should not be allowed to simply punt/throw etc. to start play again.
As a ref, if a keeper was holding the ball, and there was an injury, I would often tell the keeper to throw the ball out of bounds before stopping play, rather than subject them to a drop ball right in front of the goal.
Yes, I didn’t make myself clear - when this does happen, the returning of possession is no different in terms of reliance on good sportsmanship to the practice of kicking it out of play. If it happened multiple times in games, Gangster Octopus’s complaint would re-emerge.
I’m not a fan of Rugby, but I have to agree that the level of respect shown to the ref is much higher. For those that don’t know of it, the ref in (possible either Union or League, or both) Rugby has a microphone, so you not only hear what he says but also what the close players say to him. It’s great to hear (generally) level tones and respect from the players, as opposed to lip-reading expletives in football.