The countdown to the 2026 World Cupis on! Each day ahead of the tournament’s return to North America, Yahoo Sports will highlight an insight or moment that showcases just how grand the world’s biggest sporting spectacle has become — even beyond the expanded field of this year’s global event.
Since the introduction of yellow and red cards at the 1970 World Cup, only two players have managed the same unfortunate trick twice: getting sent off on the sport’s biggest stage.
Rigobert Song was the first. The Cameroon defender played in four World Cups, but his first appearance at the 1994 World Cup ended early when the 17-year-old was given a straight red card following a tackle on Brazil's Bebeto. Four years later, he earned a second yellow card after a foul on Chile's Marcelo Salas, becoming the first player sent off in two different World Cups.
Five days earlier in that same tournament, Zinedine Zidane received a straight red card for a stamp on Saudi Arabia's Fuad Amin. “Zizou” most famous exit would come eight years later in the final of the 2006 World Cup, when he was sent off in the 110th minute for head-butting Marco Materazzi. Italy went on to win in penalty kicks.
The moment became so iconic that a 16-foot statue of the head-butt was created in 2012 and displayed at the Pompidou Centre in Paris before being purchased by the Qatari Museum Authority and installed along the Corniche in Doha. After criticism, it was eventually moved to the Arab Museum of Modern Art.
