In this post, we explain the football expression ‘straight red’, which featured in the 2018 World Cup match between Colombia and Japan.
- Find out more about this phrase by reading the transcript below.
- You can also find many more examples of soccer vocabulary by going to our football cliches page here and our huge football glossary here.
Football Language: Straight red
A red card is given when a player commits a serious foul in football and he or she then has to leave the pitch, leaving their team down to ten (or maybe nine) players. A player can be sent off after receiving two yellow cards but if the offence is serious then he/she receives a straight red card. In yesterday’s World Cup Group H game between Colombia and Japan, the Colombian midfielder Carlos Sanchez deliberately stopped a shot on goal with his hand – he prevented the ball from going in – which meant that the referee had to show him a straight red. This was the first red card of the tournament and meant Colombia had to play with ten players for nearly the whole game.
Example: ‘Colombia midfielder Carlos Sanchez was the first player to be sent off in the tournament when he was shown a straight red card for a deliberate handball in the World Cup Group H match against Japan on Tuesday.’ (Reuters, June 20th 2018).
