00:00As the players continued assaulting each other behind the referee's back, there was nothing
00:04he could do about it. No matter how much Ken Astin tried to exert his authority, the players
00:09from both Chile and Italy wouldn't listen to him. They all spoke Spanish and Italian,
00:14Ken Astin only spoke English, and even when he tried to send the players off,
00:17they either didn't understand him or they just refused to listen. It was total chaos,
00:22and it seemed like the only way to get the message through was for the Chilean police
00:26to storm the pitch and physically drag off the offending players. By the end of the match,
00:31there were two expulsions, a broken nose, and multiple interventions by armed police.
00:36However, it might surprise you to find out that through all of this chaos, not a single player
00:40received a red card. Not because the fouls weren't serious enough, but because the concept of a red
00:45card hadn't actually been invented yet. See, before the red card, referees of the world game relied
00:51only on verbal communication and hand gestures to communicate fouls and warnings. This system worked
00:57fine in domestic matches where everybody spoke the same language, but every couple of years during
01:02Olympic or World Cup matches, the system would break down. Anytime a player was sent off, the entire
01:07process was plagued with confusion. Not just because of the language barrier either. Crowds often had no
01:13idea what was going on, and officials often didn't know either until the referee could come off the pitch
01:18and deliver the message directly. But if anyone was going to solve this problem, it was going to be
01:23Ken Aston. See, by the 1966 World Cup, Ken had been appointed the head of the World Cup referees.
01:30But it wasn't until he witnessed the chaos of another communication breakdown during a World Cup
01:34match between his home country of England and Argentina that Ken finally had to accept that his
01:40beloved game was clearly broken. And so, the day following that match, Ken got to thinking while he was
01:46driving home from his office through London. How could referees enforce their decisions and authority
01:51without words? How do you communicate a single decision immediately and clearly to an entire
01:56crowd of tens of thousands of people? While he was deep in thought, Ken pulled up at a traffic light.
02:02In his years with FIFA, Ken had travelled the world. He'd been to South America, Africa, Asia,
02:07and every corner of Europe. And everywhere he went, traffic lights worked the same way. Yellow meant
02:12caution. Red meant stop. The colours transcended language entirely. He thought maybe referees could
02:18use colours to represent their decisions. He got home, told his wife Hilda about the idea. Hilda cut
02:23a yellow and red card out of her coloured craft paper. FIFA loved the idea and Ken Aston would go
02:29down in history as the man who brought order to the chaos of the world game.
Comments