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Chapter 1: You’ve Got to Be Kidding Me!
On and off the field, anything can happen. On the pitch (that’s British for “field”) things can get odd, gross, and sometimes ridiculous. From floating soccer fields to megastars injuring themselves playing video games, these pages are your ticket to some of the wackiest moments of world soccer.
You can buy a true-to-life sculpture of Lionel Messi for only $5 million. It is made of gold and was designed by a Japanese jeweler.
The shirt that Pelé wore during the final match of the 1970 World Cup, in which Brazil won its third World Cup trophy, was sold in 2002 for US $137,100.
Alfredo Di Stéfano, one of the best players in soccer history, built a monument for a soccer ball in his house. It’s a ball made of bronze with a plaque that reads “Gracias, vieja.” (“Thanks, old woman.”)
What do Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar, and Carlos Tévez have in common (beyond the fact that they are all great players)? They also share a birthday: February 5.
Old soccer stadiums didn’t have many seats. Most fans watched the games standing on bleachers made of concrete.
The record for the highest-altitude stadium belongs to the Hernando Siles Stadium in Bolivia. With an altitude of 2.23 miles (3.6 kilometers) above sea level, playing here leaves players gasping for breath.
The Float at Marina Bay is the biggest floating soccer stadium in the world. The pitch of the stadium floats on the waters of the Marina Reservoir in Singapore.
The Panyee Football Club on the island of Koh Panyee in Thailand needed a place to play their games. But finding a patch of grass on this tiny fishing island was impossible. Even the schools sit atop stilts here. So the kids decided to build a floating football field. Today, the Panyee Football Club is one of the best youth teams in Thailand!
Thousand of soccer fans gather every year to watch games played by elephants in the Chitwan National Park in Nepal!
Perhaps the messiest form of soccer is swamp football. Six players per team play in a swamp and do their best to play the beautiful game. The Swamp Soccer World Cup is played in Scotland every year.
If you like both soccer and bike riding, then cycle-ball is the sport for you. Also known as radball, this is a form of soccer where teams of two players ride bikes while controlling a ball with the wheels.
Golfoot is a mix between golf and soccer. The idea is to kick a ball into a hole, as in golf. Of course the holes are much bigger here.
Norway and Brazil played a decisive game during the 1998 World Cup in France. Before the game, Norwegian player Øivind Ekeland and his Brazilian fiancée, Rosangela de Souza, got married on the pitch. Norway beat Brazil 2–1 so it could be said that Øivind won twice that day.
Things seemed normal on the field when France was playing Kuwait during the 1982 World Cup in Spain—that is until a man wearing a robe, sandals, and a kaffiyeh (an Arab headdress) stormed onto the field to protest a goal. The man, a sheik and also president of the Kuwait Football Federation, was upset about what he thought was an illegal goal against his team. The referees were so confused that they agreed with him and changed their decision. France won the game 4 to 1, something no leader could have stopped.
A Japanese kid lost his soccer ball during the tsunami that hit Japan in 2011. The ball was found in Alaska two years later after traveling more than 3,000 miles (4,828 km) across the Pacific Ocean. The kid got his ball back.
A 2011 study found that the jersey of a soccer player almost doubles its weight from the beginning of a game to the end. That’s a lot of sweat!
