By the end of the World Cup, I knew more about the FIFA Disciplinary Code than any reasonable person should. Some would blame Folarin Balogun, others Donald Trump. Personally, I think the blame lies at the head of the snake, Gianni Infantino. Maybe I’m being melodramatic, but I’m willing to bet Infantino hasn’t read the code at all.

There’s that old saying: if you haven’t done/seen/eaten/read “x”, then you haven’t lived. I raise you the reverse. Reading the FIFA Disciplinary Code was as close to a near-death experience as I’ve ever had. 

On July 1, Folarin Balogun was sent off against Bosnia and Herzegovina after a VAR review of a challenge on Tarik Muharemovic. At a World Cup, a red card means an automatic one-match ban, which should have kept the USMNT striker out of the round of 16 against Belgium. Instead, the day before the game, FIFA’s Disciplinary Committee used Article 27 of its code to suspend the suspension, putting it on a one-year probation. Balogun played in Seattle. U.S. President Donald Trump later said he’d spoken to Gianni Infantino about it, and he praised the outcome as a “really brilliant decision.” 

FIFA says its committee acted independently, though The Times reported that the committee’s chair made the call on his own. The chair has since been named as Mohammad al-Kamali, and I’m sure I won’t be the only one who would love to see his phone logs that week. 

Belgium, clearly fired up by the furore, went on to win 4-1. It was a tragic end to what had been a fantastic World Cup campaign from the USMNT. But whatever, I’m not here to rehash the past. FIFA is already doing that for me, with Article 27 set for a rewrite and approval due at the Council in Doha on December 16 

What stuck with me was something simpler. I’d followed the whole saga and realised I had no idea how football discipline is decided. Who sits on these committees? What are they allowed to consider? Who can overrule them?

So I went looking closer to home, or rather the home of MLS, expecting a tidy rulebook. As a British born Aussie, maybe that’s stretching the definition of home, but I’ll let myself slide. What I found was a league that has spent decades fining people an undisclosed amount.

I’ll spare you the full read. MLS’s Disciplinary Committee has five members: three former MLS players (one picked by the players’ union), a former coach and a former referee. Above them sits the Commissioner, who can punish on-field misconduct “in his sole discretion,” a phrase I’d like added to my own job description.

They work under three “parameters.” Parameter 1 covers what the officials didn’t see. Parameter 2 covers red cards that deserve a little extra. Parameter 3 covers what the referee saw and didn’t send off, which needs the whole committee to agree it was a clear red card. For a one-game ban, the referees’ own organisation also has to admit the referee got it wrong. With no disrespect to the Professional Referee Organization, that’s a lot of faith in the referees’ ability to mark their own homework. 

Fines come in two flavors. The first is “an undisclosed amount,” which turns up in the league’s press releases so often it should be sponsored. The second is yellow-card accumulation, the only fine schedule I could find published: $250 for a fifth, $500 for an eighth, $750 for an eleventh, $1,000 for a thirteenth, then it doubles. There’s even a “Good Behavior Incentive,” where five games without a card knocks a yellow off your total. It’s a loyalty program for not getting booked. 

I would be incredibly keen to hear whether that actually has any impact on the numbers of yellows given. I also realised that the regulations only require an appearance, so technically a ten-second cameo in five consecutive games should knock a yellow off your total. Unfortunately this method is capped at three a season, so even the loophole has a ceiling.

Remember FIFA suspending a suspension? MLS got there first. In 2023, Salt Lake’s Jasper Löffelsend was banned for one game for spitting at an opponent, with a second game “held in abeyance” provided he behaved for the rest of the season. Article 27 didn’t invent the genre.

By 2024 the price was settled at three games: the red card plus two. Real Salt Lake’s Brayan Vera paid it for spitting at Minnesota’s Michael Boxall. Houston’s Héctor Herrera paid it for spitting in the direction of referee Armando Villarreal in a playoff elimination game, then got a separate fine for failing to leave the field a minute later. Houston had already let him go, so he served the ban in Mexico after joining Toluca.

Then there’s Luis “Chewy” Suárez, a man who has diversified from biting to spitting. Suárez spat at a Sounders staffer after the 2025 Leagues Cup final. The tournament banned him for six games, to be served in next year’s edition. MLS tacked on three of its own, the first against Charlotte, the night Idan Toklomati scored a hat-trick. Then in August, Suárez sat out the entire 2026 Leagues Cup, a six-game ban that covered a whole tournament, on the back of seven goals in four league games. I’m told punishment is meant to fit the crime. Not sure about the twelve-month delivery window.

Some cases are less price list, more performance art. In 2015, Clint Dempsey tore up a referee’s notebook during an Open Cup game. Textbook, or rather notebook Dempsey. No notes. 

The Open Cup banned him for six matches and MLS added three. Commissioner Don Garber ruled it “referee abuse,” a three-game minimum, rather than “assault,” a six-game minimum, even though assault includes damaging a referee’s property. One critic called the punishment “ceremonial.” The only way I can make sense of it is if Dempsey scrawled his name on the cover first. 

In 2011, Colorado’s Brian Mullan broke Steve Zakuani’s leg three minutes into a game. He got ten matches, the longest suspension for an on-the-ball tackle in league history, and a $5,000 fine, $250 of it for the red card. That’s the same $250 the league charges today for a fifth yellow.

Then there’s the going rate for a yellow card on the black market. In 2023, a spreadsheet in a Brazilian match-fixing probe reportedly listed Colorado’s Max Alves next to 60,000 Brazilian reais, or about $12,000, for getting booked against the Galaxy in 2022.

He was shown a yellow within two minutes of coming on. Alves wasn’t among those charged and said there was nothing in his name. Colorado pulled him from team activities, and MLS’s investigation was still “open and ongoing” when he left for Brazil in January 2024. Never been a mathematics guy, but if that spreadsheet is right, a yellow card was worth forty-eight times what the league fines you for a fifth. Two minutes in? Somebody was a bit eager. Allegedly. 

In a semi-win for the good guys, Brazil has since regulated betting, then in September moved to ban it, and the criminal case only began hearing witnesses in June 2025. 

To be fair to the league, it can be firm. In 2012 it gave Houston’s Colin Clark and Seattle’s Marc Burch three games each, plus mandatory sensitivity training, for homophobic slurs. Whether that’s firm enough is another debate. 

Other cases are defined by what the league won’t say. In 2023, FC Cincinnati’s Matt Miazga was suspended three games for “misconduct” after a playoff win, with the league saying little else. A source said he’d entered a referees-only area, and the players’ union said video showed the referees’ statements were false. In 2024, a post-match melee between Toronto and New York City cost Toronto its head coach and several players for a game. John Herdman accused NYCFC’s Nick Cushing of punching someone, Cushing denied it, and the league has said nothing since that I can find.

I spent an unreasonable amount of this week reading the Disciplinary Committee’s weekly press releases, which read like a courtroom drama written by an accountant. The 2026 greatest hits are simulation, hands to the face and my personal favourite: failing to leave the field in a timely manner. After a red card, a player is supposed to reach the nearest boundary line in under thirty seconds. Eight rulings I checked this year turned up fourteen players fined for it, including Charlotte captain Ashley Westwood. He was sent off against Houston on September 5, fined for taking too long to leave, and suspended two games, one for the red and one for yellow-card accumulation. 

I’ve seen plenty of social media threads from fans trying to understand why a player was fined, despite appearing to walk off the field almost immediately. 31 seconds is 31 seconds. The entertainment value is fantastic. 

Simulation fines keep landing on familiar names: Nashville’s Sam Surridge, Hany Mukhtar (twice), Suárez (again) and Philadelphia’s Frankie Westfield, fined for a dive on October 10, a week before Allan Saint-Maximin was booked for a challenge on him. Everyone ends up in the same press release eventually. CF Montréal’s Alexis Sánchez, who once played for my club, a fact I’ve spent years trying to forget, was fined for simulation against Charlotte a month after arriving. At least we’re no longer paying him £500,000 a week. Yes, this is trauma dumping. 

 The committee did overturn one fine, D.C. United’s Matti Peltola’s, when new video turned up, which proves it’s capable of admitting it was wrong. 

Orlando’s Antoine Griezmann was fined for throwing or kicking an object toward fans. And Wilfried Zaha collected seven yellows in 13 league games, tied for the most in MLS at the time, including a fifth that cost him $250 and a game against Nashville.

The latest entry came after Houston and San Diego brawled on October 14. The committee fined both clubs and both head coaches, Ben Olsen and Mikey Varas, along with three players and a San Diego performance scientist, all for “inciting and/or escalating” a mass confrontation. That’s my favourite line of the season. I’m living in hope an official heatmap will be released. Houston’s Lyle Foster was also put on “official warning” for the rest of 2026 for violent conduct.

So is MLS the wild west? Sort of. But at least it’s consistent. The league tells you up front that it will fine you an undisclosed amount, suspend you under a parameter, and tell you very little else. FIFA’s version, we learned this summer, can reportedly come down to one person’s decision on the eve of a match. After Infantino and Balogun, a $250 fine for a fifth yellow card feels oddly comforting.

Reading FIFA’s code almost put me in the ground. Reading MLS’s press releases made me feel alive, mostly because someone fined a performance scientist. As for how much this article will cost me, I’m afraid that’s an undisclosed amount.