In 2018, the first green card was flashed by a referee in the CONIFA cup

Football is a sport with a bunch of rules. Out of several, the most interesting and powerful decree of the game is the work of a red card and a yellow card. A referee is given the power to trot out a yellow or red card to an athlete if he or she generates a foul. Poorly tackling an opposition, deliberately hitting an opponent, foul-mouthing a challenger or demonstrating some alternative form of malice on the pitch can earn a professional, a yellow or red card from the referee.

When a participant is presented with a red card, he or she is ordered to leave the pitch immediately. When it comes to yellow, the referee can produce it once as a warning and the athlete can remain on the pitch. If that player conducts a vicious foul for the second time in the game, the referee can present him a second yellow card, which indirectly gets him a red card. However, there’s another card that has newly emerged in soccer and the colour of that card is green.

Green Card in CONIFA

In simple terms, the green card can be put between a yellow card and a red card. If a member executes a foul and the referee shows him or her a green card, the player must leave the pitch. However, there’s a catch. The player with a green card must leave the pitch, but another professional can join the side in place of him from the substitutes. Furthermore, the player with a green card can appear in the next match which is not the case with a red card.

Moving on to CONIFA, it’s a football body different from FIFA, which brings together small democracies. The Confederation of Independent Football Associations World Cup is played every two years, and the first green card was wielded in the 2018 CONIFA World Cup that was held in England.

Green Card in Serie B

Using green card differs from country-to-country and league-to-league. In the Italian league of Serie B, the green card is flashed by the referee to a participant for playing the game in a fair manner. In 2016, a player went himself and informed the referee that the ball did not touch him. The action lost him and his club a corner kick, but he was presented a green card for promoting true sportsmanship.

Roosevelt Castro Bohorquez cultivated this concept of the green card in 1996, as he wanted to reward the professionals for promoting mutual respect and fair gameplay on the pitch.