World Cup: Mexico’s Jesus Gallardo Takes Just 15 Seconds To Break Record For Fastest Ever World Cup Card (Video)

Chris Wright

27th, June 2018

By Jack Beresford

Embed from Getty Images

Mexico winger Jesus Gallardo set a new record for the fastest ever booking at a World Cup by taking just 15 second to pick up a yellow card against Sweden.

Gallardo earned his unique place in football history by careering into the back of Ola Toivonen almost directly from kick-off in Yekaterinburg.

While it could have been worse, but Gallardo’s heavy aerial clonk on Toivonen was only a record-breaker rather than a bone breaker, beating the previous ‘best’ set many moons ago.

Jose Alberto Batista earned the original fastest card record after picking up a straight red for scything down Gordon Strachan after 54 seconds of Uruguay’s game against Scotland back at Mexico ’86.

Strictly speaking, the record broken by Gallardo formerly belonged to Russia’s Sergey Gorlukovich, who also went into the book after 54 seconds against Sweden at USA 1994.

So, Gallardo goes into the annals by pipping Gorlukovich by a princely 39 seconds.

He also sets a new World Cup card record for Mexico, whose previous best was the 1:36 minutes Jesus Arellano took to get booked in the group stages at the 2002 World Cup.

Embed from Getty Images

There was a happy ending for Gallardo at least as, despite falling to a 3-0 defeat against Sweden, El Tri eventually managed to qualify for the knockouts at the expense of Germany, who lost 2-0 to the already eliminated South Korea.

Posted in World Cup

Share this article: Email

Leave a Reply