Out of 18 red cards handed out in the group stage only one red card was given to a team from Western Europe from which there are 9 teams. That lone red card was the blatant elbow dealt to Brian McBride. Compare that to the 17 others handed out to the rest of the footballing world. 8 of the 17 reds handed out were during matches against Western European teams to their opponents. When an area of the world makes up roughly a third of the teams at the World Cup but only receives one expulsion over the course of 27 group matches and so many other cards are handed out, something needs to be corrected.
Even more speculative is the fact that all nine of the teams in the world cup from Western Europe made it through to the knockout rounds. This is the most amount of teams in World Cup history from Western Europe ever in the round of 16.
Western Europe (France, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, England, Spain, Portugal, Sweeden, Italy)
Teams: 9
Reds: 1
Yellows: 60
The number of red cards is proportional to the professionalism of the players -- obviously, the W.European teams, with a long legacy of football excellence, are going to receive fewer cards!! Besides, this is a completely spurious analysis -- plenty of non-W.E. countries, including Saudi Arabia, got NO red cards. See the real statistics here (where you'll observe that the final totals are commensurate with the number of games played by each team): http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/06/en /w/stats/detail.html?section=tdc&so rt=EXP
I like soccer. I watch a lot of soccer. Sometimes I play soccer and it's a sad site.
I pretty much exclusively support Liverpool after being deserted by the MLS (see: San Jose Clash… I mean Earthquakes… I mean Houston 1836? errr… Dynamo, whatever). I’ve been following the game since 1995, and in-depth since about 2002. I’m currently a senior in college at Arizona and catch Sounders games over the summer in Seattle. So yup, that’s about it.
