Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to list the sending-off offences under Law 12, including the DOGSO principle and its sanction variations.

Lesson Explanation

Beyond using excessive force (Part 2, Lesson 3) and the second-caution rule (Part 2, Lesson 4), a player is sent off (shown a red card) for a further specific list of offences.

A player is sent off for: serious foul play; violent conduct; spitting at or biting someone; denying an opponent an obvious goalscoring opportunity by an offence punishable by a free kick or penalty kick (DOGSO, covered in detail below); denying an obvious goalscoring opportunity by an offence punishable by a penalty kick specifically when the offence is NOT an attempt to play the ball (a more severe DOGSO variant); using offensive, insulting, or abusive language/gestures; and receiving a second caution in the same match (the “second yellow” from the previous lesson).

DOGSO (Denying an Obvious Goalscoring Opportunity) genuinely has nuanced sanction outcomes depending on the nature of the offence, a distinction worth learning precisely: if the offence is an attempt to play the ball and is not a handball, a caution (not a sending-off) is sufficient if the offence is a free-kick offence; but a genuinely more serious escalation applies when the DOGSO offence is a deliberate handball, or a foul committed with no genuine attempt to play the ball — in these cases, a sending-off is required, and this holds whether the restart is a free kick or a penalty kick.

A genuinely important, related concept covered fully in Part 4, Lesson 5: if the referee plays advantage following a DOGSO offence rather than stopping play immediately, and a goal is subsequently scored as a direct result, no sanction is given for the DOGSO offence at all — but if no goal results, the offending player may still be cautioned or sent off (per the rules above) at the next stoppage.

Practice Questions