A team counter differs from a player’s cards
FIFA’s 2025/26 futsal laws, available through the All India Football Federation, record accumulated fouls separately by team and period. Law 13 specifies a direct free kick beginning with a team’s sixth accumulated foul and subsequent such fouls, with no defensive wall. The count is not simply the number of yellow cards shown.
Imagine four different players each commit one counting offence and a fifth player commits another. The team total reaches five even though nobody has committed all five. Conversely, a disciplinary display and the accumulated-foul display need not show matching numbers because they record different categories of information.
Do not count every stoppage in the same way
The current laws distinguish counting direct-free-kick offences from other restarts and explicitly state that no accumulated foul is recorded when a penalty kick is awarded. This differs from an older shortcut that treats every foul leading to either kind of kick as an addition to the counter.
For an original ledger, create columns for period, offending team, restart and whether the official count increases. A throw-in-style restart or an indirect free kick should not be converted into a counting offence merely because play stopped. Likewise, preserve the stated penalty-kick exception rather than reconstructing the total from a highlights compilation of whistles.
Sixth does not always identify the same kicking spot
Law 13 says a qualifying sixth or later offence inside the offender’s own penalty area produces a penalty kick instead of the special direct free kick. The foul counter supplies part of the decision, while the offence location supplies another. A count of six alone is not enough to infer the complete restart.
The useful viewing sequence is to identify the team’s running count, the official restart and the relevant location. An original note saying “sixth counting offence; penalty-area decision” retains more meaning than “ten-metre foul”. The latter could impose a kicking location that the actual decision did not award.
Extra time continues the second-period tally
The laws start the team tallies from zero in each of the two periods, while second-period accumulated fouls continue into extra time. Extra time is therefore not another automatic reset of this counter. A fresh-looking clock does not prove the foul tally has restarted.
For an original example, a team ending the second period with five accumulated fouls begins extra time carrying those five. Its next counting offence reaches six. Keep the clock phase and foul period in separate columns so that a change of time display does not silently erase the total. This explanation follows the named 2025/26 laws rather than an older national-association webpage with different wording.
Questions answered
Are accumulated fouls the same as yellow cards?
No. They are a team-and-period count of the specified offences.
Does extra time reset the second-period total?
No. The second-period count continues into extra time.
Sources & further reading
Official references for the subjects discussed. Service terms and device software can change.