After yesterday’s events on football pitches across the Pond, Subhuti analyses the significance of the colour red
The football World Cup, hailed as the greatest show on earth, got off to an unusual start in Mexico City. In the opening match between Mexico and South Africa, a record three red cards were given out by the Brazilian referee. (By way of comparison, only four red cards were given in total during the whole of the previous World Cup, in Qatar in 2022.)
As it turned out, this was nothing compared to a so-called “friendly” women’s match, held at the same time, between Brazil and the USA. A grand total of eight red cards were handed out by the referee, who had to be protected by riot police at the end of the game – all the red cards were given to Brazilian players and their coaches.
While the male footballers accepted their cards with reluctant good grace, walking off the field as instructed, the women completely lost it, arguing and shouting at the referee, punching and pushing their opponents.
Of course, “losing it” is nothing new in football matches. Wayne Rooney, one of England’s top goal scorers, was notorious for his ungovernable temper, which opposing teams happily exploited, provoking Rooney until he lashed out and received the inevitable red card.
Zidane, the legendary French footballer, earned a red in the 2006 World Cup final for headbutting an Italian player, who deliberately baited him until he snapped. The Italian defender had been repeatedly tugging at Zidane’s shirt to hold him back, until Zidane sarcastically offered to give the shirt to him. “I’d rather have the shirt off your woman,” retorted the Italian, triggering the infamous headbutt.
Off the pitch, many of us have experienced moments in life when, quite suddenly, all civilised behaviour is lost. I clearly remember an encounter with another sannyasin, on the Oregon Ranch, when I understood that if we had both been wearing six guns, as in the Old West, it would have been high noon on Main Street, with only one of us walking away.
Of course, this is why the USA has such a high homicide rate, due to its liberal gun laws. In daily life, when conflict escalates and tempers flare, when we start “seeing red” so to speak, if there is a gun handy, there are bound to be casualties.
It makes me wonder, though, why the colour red has been associated with these situations. Why, for example, did it become the colour of choice for the card indicating dismissal during a football match?
Apparently, an English referee, back in the 1960s, had struggled to convey to a foreign footballer that the player had been sent off. Later, this same referee was driving his car through London and was stopped at a red light. In a flash of intuition, he saw that amber could be used as cautionary card, and red as a dismissal.
The system was given a trial at the 1970 World Cup and was thereafter gradually adopted as the norm, both in international games and in national leagues.
But this doesn’t really answer the question. Why was red chosen for traffic lights? Well, apparently it was adopted from signals on railway lines, where it was used to stop trains.
Why did the railway companies choose red? There is a scientific explanation. In the visible spectrum of colour, red has the longest wavelength, allowing it to be seen by train drivers from the furthest distance.
But that’s only half the story. There’s a deeper reason that goes back much further than the invention of railway trains.
According to well-established research, the colour red triggers an instinctive reaction in humans, both mentally and physically, putting us on high alert and activating the “fight or flight” mode of self-preservation.
Why so? Well, when it comes right down to it, it’s probably because red is the colour of blood. In nature, as well as in the long, violence-filled saga of human history, seeing blood signals injury, danger, or conflict. Inevitably, and automatically, our brains switch to a state of high alertness to deal with a critical situation.
I don’t want to appear overly Freudian in my analysis, but perhaps being given a red card during a football game symbolically signifies that you are now “dead” and therefore you can no longer participate as a warrior on the battlefield of the football pitch. Sport is, after all, a kind of substitute for war, so maybe this analogy isn’t too far-fetched.
In moments of crisis, our biology also sends out social signals, to friend and foe alike. Strong emotions like anger cause blood to rush to the face. A red face, in both humans and our primate ancestors, acts as a warning sign of aggression and emotion. Additionally, it is said that when our faces flush with anger, the veins in our eyes also enlarge, causing us to “see red” in the form of a red mist, although personally I have never noticed this phenomenon in myself.
Strangely, though, and contrary to popular belief, bulls do not see red, due to the fact that they are colour blind. Therefore, the use of the red colour in the matador’s cape has no effect. Apparently, it is the movement of the cape that triggers the bull’s charge. So, the metaphor, applied to provocative human actions that are likened to “showing a red rag to a bull” has no basis in reality.
Oh, and by the way, the Roman God of War, Mars, wasn’t named after the red planet. Apparently, it was the other way around: the planet was named after the God of War because of its fiery, reddish light.
And let us not forget the red flag of communist revolution, adopted by Vladimir Lenin to symbolise the blood and sacrifices of the working class, the proletariat, in its struggle against its capitalist oppressors.
Even today, the British Labour Party concludes its annual conference by singing “The Red Flag”, whose verses begin:
“The people’s flag is deepest red,
It shrouded oft our martyred dead…”
Labour’s middle-class leaders tend to be embarrassed by this unabashedly revolutionary ballad, and merely lip synch the words, while the party’s Left-wing socialists sing it with gusto.
Similarly, we have Mao Tse Tung’s Little Red Book in which the Chinese Communist Leader noted, among other things, that “Revolution grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
And let’s face it, even when driving on a quiet English country road, nothing is likely to quicken the pulse more than a swiftly passing red Ferrari.
Back in the 1970s, when Westerners like me travelled to Pune, India, to meet Osho and become initiated as his disciples, he asked us to wear orange. This was the traditional colour of sannyas in India, used by sadhus for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
But when we all went to Oregon, in 1981, the colour somehow switched to red. To this day, I don’t know whether this was a natural transition, or whether Osho specifically initiated it. Maybe someone can enlighten me. Whatever the cause, it certainly didn’t give us a low profile amid the blue jeans of Central Oregon’s farming community. Within a very short time, these locals were “seeing red” every time we appeared on the evening television news.
Maybe that was the point. Osho loved to provoke people.
Since then, a lot of water has gone down the Ganges, and here we are, forty or fifty years later, watching red cards being flashed at the 2026 World Cup. Let’s break open a bottle of red wine and toast our favourite teams!
Featured image: iStock
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