fact
In the 1962 World Cup, the Chilean team ate Swiss cheese before beating Switzerland, spaghetti before beating Italy, and drank vodka before beating the USSR. Then they drank coffee before their match against Brazil but lost. 00
Brazilian footballer Carlos Kaiser staged his whole career for 24 years: he could barely kick a ball. In the first training session with every new team, the con man usually suffered a “muscle injury” that would keep him out for an indefinite period. 00
Calling football “soccer” originated in Britain 200 years ago. It wasn’t until the 1980s the name was phased out because it was thought to be “too American”. 00
Top-flight Spanish soccer team, Athletic Bilbao, only signs local talents and players of Basque decent. The team has won numerous titles and remained in the top tier of Spanish soccer ever since its inception in 1898.
Calling football “soccer” originated in Britain 200 years ago. It wasn’t until the 1980s that Britain began to phase out the name because it was “too American”.
Cristiano Ronaldo funded the education of a 7 y.o. survivor of the horrific 2004 tsunami in Indonesia. The boy was found 21 days after the disaster, alone and wearing a Portuguese national football team jersey. The boy grew up to be a football player and was signed by Sporting Lisbon last year.
A Soviet soccer player was so popular that when he was sent to the Siberian gulags during Stalin’s Great Purge in the 1930s, he was treated rather well as the gulag commanders were also his fans, who gave him better quarters and food rations, and was even asked to coach the local teams.
There is a stadium in Brazil in which the midfield line supposedly lies exactly on the Equator, making each team defend one hemisphere.
With a permanent population of less than one million people, Qatar hires migrant workers to fill their empty stadiums in the Qatar Stars League, paying them one dollar an hour to “sit in the stadiums and pretend to have fun”.
A World Cup qualifying match between Chile and Brazil was canceled after an opposing fan hit the Chilean goalkeeper with a flare. Photos later proved that the flare never touched him; he faked the injury with a hidden razor blade.