South Africa's Themba Zwane is shown a red card by referee Wilton Sampaio during their Fifa World Cup 2026 Group A match against Mexico at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City on June 11, 2026.
Who is Anatoli Puzach? What about Victor Serebryanikov?
The former is the first player to be substituted in the Fifa World Cup, while the latter is the first player to enter the field of play as a replacement in the tournament's history.
This happened during the 1970 Fifa World Cup, when Gavril Kachalin, the Soviet Union coach, made changes to his team during their opening match against Mexico at the Estadio Azteca on May 31.
Previously, teams would play with their starting 11 players for the entire duration of the match, including extra time. This is just one of the many changes that Fifa has made to tournament rules since the first World Cup in Uruguay in 1930.
The 2026 tournament will feature several new rules. For example, players will have just five seconds to take a throw-in, goal kick or free kick. Failing to do so within that time will result in possession being awarded to the opposing team. This is intended to speed up play.
The VAR system will now have expanded powers to review second yellow cards and wrongly awarded corner kicks.
Following the 2026 Africa Cup of Nations final debacle, it will now be a direct red card offense for players to unilaterally leave the field of play as an act of protest against a referee's decision.
You wonder how a referee would have identified such a player in the 1930 or 1934 events when teams were in plain jerseys.
Red and yellow cards
Fifa required numbers to appear on the back of jerseys from the 1938 World Cup. That would have made it easy to identify a player who was sent off or yellow carded, or one taking a penalty. Red and yellow cards were first used at the World Cup in 1970. Before that, it was not uncommon for newspaper reports to confuse players who had been carded.
In fact, penalty shoot-outs were introduced at the World Cup in 1978. Previously, if a match ended in a draw after extra time, it was replayed. If a winner still could not be determined, a drawing of lots was conducted.
The first post-match penalty shoot-out, however, did not take place until the semi-finals of the 1982 tournament in Spain, between West Germany and France.
The match finished 3–3 after extra time. West Germany won the subsequent shoot-out 5–4.
What a number of goals! Paradoxically, eight years later, the 1990 World Cup produced a record low of just 2.2 goals per match. Negative football, back-passing to the goalkeeper and time-wasting were the calling cards of many a team.
The upshot? Fifa introduced a rule prohibiting goalkeepers from picking up back-passed balls. This rule was observed at the 1994 competition in the USA, where an average of 2.7 goals were scored per game — the highest since 1970.
Throw-backs to the goalkeeper were banned from 1998. The offside rule has changed many times since the game was invented in England in 1863.
Offside calls have stirred controversy, from an attacking player being prohibited from being in front of the ball irrespective of the defender’s position, to being ruled onside if three opponents stood between the striker and the goal.
After much deliberation, VAR technology was included in the Laws of the Game in 2018, and was first used at the 2018 World Cup in Russia to help clarify decisions relating to offside, sending-offs and goals.
Thankfully, the golden goal rule was introduced in 1998 and abandoned after the 2002 tournament, which was co-hosted by Japan and South Korea.
This year, the tournament will feature a record 48 teams for the first time in history. Teams will advance from the group stages to the round of 32 for the first time, before proceeding to the more familiar pre-quarter-final stage. This means that the eventual winner in America will play eight matches.
Now that is a worthy world champion!
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