South Africa have entered the record books for unwanted reasons after becoming the first team in two decades to have two players sent off in a single FIFA men’s World Cup match.
According to football statistics platform OptaJoe, the double dismissal made South Africa the first side to receive two red cards in a World Cup game since the infamous round of 16 clash between Portugal and the Netherlands at the 2006 tournament in Germany.
That match, played in Nuremberg and famously dubbed the “Battle of Nuremberg”, saw both Portugal and the Netherlands finish with nine men after two players from each side were sent off.
South Africa’s latest disciplinary setback ended a 20-year wait for a repeat of such an occurrence at football’s biggest tournament.
The double red cards ensured that South Africa joined Portugal and the Netherlands in a rare and undesirable chapter of World Cup history, with no team having suffered the same fate since the dramatic encounter in Nuremberg in 2006.
