White Stick Awards

If you had written it in a book nobody would have believed - it would be considered too far fetched. But in a repeat of history linesman Rafa Guerrero struck again some ten years since he first came to the attention of Planet Earth in the famous match between Zaragoza and Barcelona. The referee at the time was Mejuto González, and everything was going smoothly until Rafa's X-ray vision (some say he is from another planet) spotted something that only he could see - "penalty to Barça and red card for Zaragoza's number 5!". "No me jodas Rafa" was Mejuto's reply, a phrase which was picked up by the microphones and broadcast around the Spanish speaking world.

Ten years later the referee was Iturralde González and the ground was the Nou Camp, but midway through the second half Rafa called across his boss, and the world stopped to listen: "red card for Barcelona number 3 (Motta) for handing off an opponent!". The stadium erupted, and this time it was Barcelona captain Carlos Puyol who was heard to utter the famous phase. Frank Rijkaard's assistant, Johan Neeskens and Zaragoza's Juanfran grabbed each other by the throat, Barça delegate Carlos Naval was shown a red card for insulting the referee, and all hell broke loose. Iturralde calmed things down, and just a couple of minutes later he found a way to even things up when he sent off Gabi Milito. But Rafa had made his mark, and the papers had their headlines. (14.11.06)

Name Games played Yellow cards Red cards Total
Rubinos Pérez 6 46 8 54
Iturralde González 6 44 8 52
Velasco Carballo 6 45 5 50
González Vázquez 6 40 3 43
Turienzo Alvarez 6 39 3 42
Pérez Lasa 6 36 2 38
Undiano Mallenco 6 34 3 37
Muñiz Fernández 7 33 3 36
Ramírez Domínguez 6 30 5 35
Daudén Ibáñez 6 30 4 34