1) The highest scoring soccer game was 149-0!
You’re probably wondering how a soccer team could be so bad that they let 149 goals be scored, but the truth is it was a form of protest. The event occurred in 2002 after a 2-2 draw between rival teams Stade Olympique de L’emyrne, or SOE, and AS Adema of Madagascar, which resulted in the referees awarding a penalty causing SOE to lose the game.
2) China once banned a soccer simulation game.
The game was called Football Manager 2005, and was released on November 5, 2004 by Sports Interactive and Sega. The game’s focus is management of a soccer team. Seems harmless enough, right?
Shortly after its release, it was found that regions like Tibet and Taiwan were included as separate countries. Tibet has had a long history as a territory of the People’s Republic of China, and because the game treated Tibet as a sovereign nation, China wasn’t happy.
3) A soccer player is credited for ending a 5 year war in his home country of the Ivory Coast!
For five years in the Ivory Coast the north was held by the rebels and the south held by the government loyals. Didier Drogba plays for Chelsea in England and is the team captain and star striker for the Ivory Coast Elephants.
Drogba pleased the warring factions to have a cease-fire. Surprisingly, they heard him and a cease-fire was enacted. Drogba suggested in an interview that the game against Madagascar be played in Bouake, the rebel-north’s capital city. The game brought the whole country together for the first time in five years.
4) Brazilian soccer star Ronaldinho first gained media attention after he scored every goal in a 23-0 game at age 13.
Ronaldo de Assis Moreira, or Ronaldinho, is a Brazilian football (soccer) star who has twice won FIFA World Player of the Year. Ronaldinho was born in Porto Alegre as the son of a salesperson and shipyard worker.
His father had also played football, but had died of a heart attack when Ronaldinho was eight. When Ronaldinho’s older brother signed with a football team, the family moved to a more wealthy area. It was short lived, though, as his brother ended his career after an injury.
When Ronaldinho was only 8, he also began to show skills in football. When he was 13, and scored 23 goals in a 23-0 victory against a local team. He was identified as a rising star at the 1997 U-17 World Championship, where he scored two goals from penalty kicks.
5) A bolt of lightning killed an entire soccer team during a game in 1998!
On October of 1998 a bolt of lightning killed an entire 11-man soccer team from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The opposing team was completely unharmed. Thirty more people had burn injuries.
Some people thought the team had been cursed and that was what caused the lightning to strike them. The game was a draw at 1-1 when the lightning struck the visiting team in the province of Kasai in the eastern region of the DRC.
Incidentally, a similar situation happened the following weekend in Johannesburg, South Africa. A Premier League soccer match was suddenly stopped when lightning struck the field.
Half of the players from both teams, the Jomo Cosmos and the Moroka Swallows, fell to the ground. Several of the players writhed on the ground holding their ears and eyes in pain. Luckily, no one was killed in that incident.
