Referee foul & card rates, 721 officials
Referees across 10 competitions — where a foul becomes a card
Fouls per match barely move between Europe's big leagues. What moves is how many of them turn into cards. And the gap between two officials inside one league is wider than the gap between the leagues themselves.
| League | Fouls | Cards | Foul to card | Across its officials |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Premier League | 21.9 | 4.08 | 18.6% | 16.3 – 21.0% |
| Bundesliga | 22.1 | 4.07 | 18.4% | 14.4 – 22.8% |
| Championship | 21.9 | 4.01 | 18.3% | 14.1 – 21.9% |
| La Liga | 25.4 | 4.86 | 19.1% | 14.0 – 23.2% |
| Ligue 1 | 24.5 | 3.87 | 15.8% | 13.7 – 19.5% |
| Serie A | 24.7 | 4.19 | 16.9% | 12.3 – 21.0% |
Per match, across every season on record: 721 officials over 11,845 matches. The range covers officials with 20 matches or more in that competition.
UEFA Champions League (9 officials with 20+ matches), EFL Cup (0 officials with 20+ matches), UEFA Europa League (0 officials with 20+ matches) and UEFA Nations League (0 officials with 20+ matches) are left out of the range: too few officials for a spread to mean anything. The per-official records are still published.