With the Soccer World Cup kicking off soon this is a great time to think about what a weird and wonderful game this is. So what are the most unbelievable soccer games ever played?
Barbados 4 Grenada 2
The scoreline from this game was pretty unremarkable but if you are a fan of the sport you probably already know that it was one seriously whacked out game of soccer. The action happened in 1994 and it was a qualification game for same year’s Caribbean Cup. The weirdness of the game came down to the fact that the tournament rules stated that any goal scored in extra time would, unusually, count as double. Barbados needed to win by 2 clear goals to qualify instead of Grenada. The Barbadian team was leading 2-1 late into the game when their players realised that their best chance of progressing was to score a deliberate own goal to force extra time and try to score the golden goal that would count double. Are you with me so far? They promptly scored an own goal to make it 2-2. The madness didn’t end there, though. The Grenadian players worked out the Barbados plan and decided that scoring in either goal would foil it, as it would stop the game going to extra time. The end of normal time in the match therefore resulted in Grenada trying to score in either of the goals and Barbados defending both. Grenada failed to score in either goal and it went to extra time. This unbelievable soccer game ended with Barbados scoring in extra time to win 4-2 and progress to the next round.
Arbroath 36 Bon Accord 0
For well over a century this Scottish game held the record for the biggest soccer victory ever. It occurred in 1885 and the losing team was actually a cricket team that got invited into the Scottish Cup for soccer teams by mistake. Incredibly, Arbroath scored 36 goals and also had between 5 and 7 goals disallowed in the game. Some people have claimed that the goalkeeper on the winning team didn’t touch the ball even once during the game. In fact, he was said to have spent the entire 90 minutes keeping dry under an umbrella. Perhaps the most delightfully bonkers fact of all is that at exactly the same time and under 20 miles away two teams were playing the game which for over a century would be the second biggest victory ever. This one ended Dundee Harp 35 Aberdeen Rovers 0, with the winning team’s secretary correcting the referee’s estimate of 37-0 before the result was lodged with the authorities and before they found out about the 36-0 game just ended a few miles away.
AS Adema 149 SO lÈmyrne 0
It was going to take some game to dislodge the previous one as the biggest soccer victory in history. In 2001 Australia thrashed American Samoa 31-0. However, the long time record eventually fell a year later. Madagascar was the unlikely seeing of a frankly unbelievable game which ended 149-0. So how does one team score 149 goals in a single 90 minute game? Simple, put them all in your own net. The losing team were carrying out some sort of bizarre protest over bad refereeing decisions and just continually kicked the ball into their own goal. The coach and 4 players from the losing team were banned after the game and the fans demanded a refund. Jeez, the soccer fans in Madagascar are hard to please.
The Royal Shrovetide Soccer Game
This is more of a street brawl than a soccer game. It is played out every year in Ashbourne in England. Basically, one half of the village plays against the other half, with the village itself being the field of play. There is no limit on the number of players involved and most of the action involves a giant group of hundreds of players shoving each other up and down the streets of the village. Goals are not often scored, even though the game goes on for two days.
