His name will probably not tell most people. In England, however, Ken Aston is a legend. It was he who created modern football in many ways as we know him. Among other things, he introduced yellow and red cards. Referees, men with whistle never had it easy, often in disfavor players and spectators. Ken Aston knew it well. He was born on September 1, 1915 and worked all his life as a teacher or headmistress.
He started to drive football matches in his free time before World War II. So he remembered the times when the referees wore an uncomfortable tweed jacket and golf pants, when the fouls or players were punished, tragicomic moments took place. The problem occurred especially in international matches. Because of the language barrier, the players sometimes did not understand that the referees wanted to rule them, others did not know that they had been admonished because of the foul.
He was inspired by Semafor to create cards
Yellow and red cards first appeared at the 1970 World Championship. Ken Astona inspired the lights at the traffic light to create them. But he has been thinking about a similar system for years. He was forced to do so some controversial matches at the world championships. One of them whistled personally at the World Championship in 1962. The match between domestic Chile and Italy perverted into a massacre. Shameful battles between players had to be scattered on the field several times by the police.
Four years later, one expelled player put his head at the championship and refused to go to the showers for a quarter of an hour. Meanwhile, Aston became the head of referees in the international football organization FIFA and tried to increase the authority of arbitrators and improve communication between them and players, or spectators. Color cards have proven to be very successful in this respect.
However, the list of astonova innovations is much more shy. He changed the rejects of the referees, invented the colorful flags of the border referees to be seen in bad weather, or introduced the fourth referee, who shows the numbers of alternating players. He died in 2001 at the age of 86 as a holder of the Order of the British Empire.
