The most booked players in the Premier League and Serie A

Barry's record is mostly a record of availability. His 653 games were the Premier League appearance record until James Milner passed them, and at one booking every 5.3 games his rate is unremarkable for a defensive midfielder. What made him the leader is that he kept going for 21 seasons at Aston Villa, Manchester City, Everton and West Brom, making the small tactical fouls that stop a counter-attack, and almost never losing his temper.

Milner shows how much the rate matters. He has 78 bookings from 658 games, roughly one every 8.4 matches, the lowest rate in the twenty by a distance. He played more Premier League games than anyone, often in the same holding roles as Barry, and was booked 45 fewer times. Mark Noble, the only one-club player here, has 82 in 414 games for West Ham, around one every five.

At the other end, Lee Cattermole's 88 bookings came in just 271 games, one every three, and Joey Barton's 78 in 269. Robbie Savage's 89 in 346 is close behind. These are the players whose totals came from frequency rather than longevity, and had any of them lasted as long as Barry, the record would belong to them.

The second, third and fifth names are not holding midfielders. Rooney was a forward for most of his 491 games, and his 102 bookings reflect a player who chased back, argued and tackled in a way most strikers never did. Kevin Davies, a centre-forward at Bolton for most of his career, is level third on 99 in 444 games. His game was aerial duels and holding the ball up against centre-backs, and a striker who spends ninety minutes in contact concedes free kicks and collects cards.

Scholes is the most famous case. His 97 yellow cards in 499 games, all for Manchester United, sit oddly beside his reputation as one of the finest passers England has produced. The explanation is no secret: his tackling was famously late and enthusiastic, a weakness acknowledged even by those who admired him most. A player can be brilliant with the ball and clumsy without it, and the booking column only sees the second.

Ashley Young (91) is the other surprise, a winger who spent the second half of his career at full-back, and Kevin Nolan's 85 came from an attacking midfielder who scored regularly for Bolton, Newcastle and West Ham. Bookings are not only a defender's statistic.

Centre-backs, by contrast, are scarce near the top. John Terry and Richard Dunne share twentieth place on 74, from 492 and 431 games. A centre-back who commits a foul is often the last man, and the punishment is a red card rather than a yellow, which is why both of them appear higher on the dismissal list than on this one. The midfielder's tactical foul in the centre circle is the classic yellow card, and the table is full of the men who made it for a living: Phil Neville (80), Nicky Butt (77) and Patrick Vieira (76, one booking every four games for Arsenal and Manchester City).

Serie A's leader, Daniele Conti, is the son of Bruno Conti, a member of Italy's 1982 World Cup-winning side. Daniele spent almost his whole career at Cagliari, and his 133 bookings in 323 games amount to one every 2.4 matches. Giampiero Pinzi, second on 128 for Udinese and Chievo, was booked roughly every three games. Not a single player on the English table manages that.

Daniele De Rossi is third with 120 in 459 games, all for Roma. Paolo Cannavaro, Fabio's younger brother, has 97 for Napoli and others. Further down, the list includes two attacking players who would never appear in an English version: Juan Cuadrado (91) and Domenico Berardi (86), a winger and a forward.

The gap holds all the way down. Twentieth in England is 74 yellow cards; in Italy it is 80, and Serie A's table covers only the seasons from 2000/01. Some of the difference is style, since Italian football of this period was more tactical and more willing to stop play with a foul. Some of it is refereeing. The tables cannot separate the two, but the pattern is the same from first place to twentieth: a career in Serie A collected cards faster than one in England.

In Top 10, a yellow-card board rewards two kinds of answer. The first is the long career in midfield: Barry, Milner, Phil Neville, Nicky Butt, Scott Parker. The second is the short, fiery one: Cattermole, Barton, Savage, Bowyer. Most players think of the second kind first and run out of answers, because the first kind are less memorable and more numerous. Start with the long careers and fill in the hotheads after.

For the Italian board, think of the clubs outside the big four. Cagliari, Udinese, Chievo, Siena and Genoa supply more of these twenty players than Juventus and Milan do, and the names that finish a round are the ones from those sides: Felipe dal Belo, Luca Cigarini, Cesare Bovo and Luca Rigoni.