The Bundesliga's most-booked players since 2000

Kohr's rate is a yellow every 3.1 games, sustained over fifteen seasons. He has been a defensive midfielder for most of his career, someone whose job was to stop the opposition building attacks through the middle, and the tactical foul to break up a counter is part of that job description. He has also been sent off nine times in the league, which is the most in Germany this century and puts him on the companion table of European dismissals.

What separates him from the players below is not a reckless streak so much as availability. He has been a regular for most of those fifteen seasons, and a cautionable foul every third game adds up quickly when the games keep coming. Three of the top ten, Kohr, Maximilian Arnold and Nicolas Höfler, were still Bundesliga players in 2025/26, and Kohr has appeared again this season, so the number at the top is not yet finished.

Kohr also shows how stable a booking rate can be. He moved between Augsburg, Leverkusen, Eintracht Frankfurt and Mainz, and his card count broadly travelled with him from one club to the next. Of all the numbers in a player's career, this is one of the least affected by form or by a change of shirt, because it comes from position and temperament more than from anything a new coach can alter quickly.

Those nine dismissals matter to how his total is counted. When a player is sent off for a second yellow, the league records a red card and no yellows for that game, so a career like Kohr's carries fewer yellows than a raw tally of every card shown would suggest. Counted the same way for everyone, his lead over Jarolím is fifteen.

David Jarolím, a Czech midfielder best known for his years at Hamburg, collected 92 in 316 games between 2001/02 and 2011/12, about one every 3.4. Below him come Lars Stindl and Maximilian Arnold, level on 86, then Hanno Balitsch on 84, Kevin Vogt on 83, Gonzalo Castro and Sebastian Rudy on 77 each, and Torsten Frings on 74. Arnold stands out among them in one respect: every one of his 400 games was for Wolfsburg. Frings, a Germany regular for most of a decade, collected his 74 in 302 games for Werder Bremen, Dortmund and Bayern.

Many of the twenty played the same role, sitting in front of the defence, and two players on it were booked faster than Kohr. Carsten Ramelow reached 65 in only 200 games, every one of them for Leverkusen, a card every 3.1 games and a fraction quicker than the leader. The highest rate on the table, though, belongs to a centre-back. Maik Franz picked up 68 bookings in just 191 Bundesliga games, roughly one every 2.8. With a longer career he could well have been top.

Luiz Gustavo is the clearest case of what the counting method does. He was sent off eight times in the Bundesliga, and once each two-yellow dismissal is recorded as a red alone he finishes on 61, two short of the 63 at which the table is cut, a total Cacau and Christian Schulz share with four players just below it.

A smaller group on the table are one-club men in the Bundesliga. Nicolas Höfler has 72 for Freiburg, Stefan Bell 71 for Mainz, Jeffrey Gouweleeuw 68 for Augsburg. All three were still in the league in 2025/26, and all three are centre-backs or holding midfielders at clubs that are rarely expected to dominate the ball. A side that spends long periods without possession asks its defensive players to commit more fouls, and the cards follow the job rather than the man.

Head to Head is a natural home for this table, because the interesting calls are not between the top and the bottom but between players with similar totals and very different careers. Stindl against Arnold, both on 86, is a tie. Franz, Barbarez and Gouweleeuw make a three-way tie on 68. Where it gets hard is a pairing like Josip Šimunić on 69 against Clemens Fritz on 70: one remembered mainly for collecting three yellows in a single World Cup match, the other a Werder Bremen stalwart who finished his career as club captain, and the difference is one card. When the totals are this close, back the player with more seasons; Fritz had thirteen to Šimunić's eleven.

Lars Stindl does not belong in this company by position. He was an attacking midfielder and, for much of his time at Gladbach, the club's captain and a regular source of goals, yet he sits third with 86 yellows from 376 games. His rate, roughly one every 4.4 matches, is slower than most of the top ten, and he was sent off only once. The total is a function of longevity as much as anything: fifteen seasons in the division. He is not the only attacker here. Sergej Barbarez, a Bosnian forward at Hamburg and Leverkusen, collected 68 in 234 games, a quicker rate than Stindl's.

His presence is a useful warning for anyone guessing at these boards. A cautious, intelligent player still picks up a yellow every month or so, and over enough seasons that becomes a number that beats more obvious hard men who played less. Gonzalo Castro, joint seventh on 77 from 420 games, is a similar case: a versatile, tidy footballer rather than an enforcer, booked steadily across seventeen seasons, and the slowest of the top ten at a card every 5.5 games.

Count every booking against every appearance since 2000/01 and the Bundesliga produces about 13.0 yellow cards per hundred player-appearances. Serie A produces 14.7 and La Liga 17.1, with all three counted the same way, two-yellow dismissals as reds only. Spain's referees show nearly a third as many cards again as Germany's for the same amount of football, which is why Kohr's 107 would not lead either of the other two leagues. Sergio Ramos has 161 La Liga yellows on that basis; Daniele Conti leads Serie A with 133. Germany is not the most lenient of the big leagues, though: counted the same way, the Premier League shows 11.8 per hundred, fewer still.

The difference holds year after year and it has an effect on how the table should be read. A German midfielder with 80 cards was booked at roughly the frequency of a Spanish one with more than a hundred. Kohr's lead would be notable in any league; given the referees he played under, it says even more about how often he was in the referee's notebook.