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Football’s Strangest Matches: Extraordinary but true stories from over a century of football
"It’s a funny old game." The world’s favorite sport has certainly given us its fair share of strange moments, and this absorbing collection gathers together the best of them, from more than a century of the beautiful game. From Blackburn Rovers’ one-man team to Wilfred Minter’s seven-goal haul in which he still ended up on the losing side, here are goals and gaffes galore drawn from all levels of the footballing world, whether high-profile internationals or the lowest tiers of domestic football. The stories in this book are bizarre, fascinating, hilarious, and, most importantly, true. This brand new edition, redesigned in splendid hardback for 2018, is the perfect gift for the soccer obsessive in your life.
- GenresFootball
256 pages, Hardcover
Published November 1, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 29, 2020
A vast collection of (mostly) dull facts related to (mostly) English football. There were few gems however.
July 10, 2024
It’s well-known in football that you cannot score a goal straight from an indirect free kick. But did you know you cannot score an own goal even from a direct free kick? If a player kicks a direct (or indirect) free kick straight into his own goal, the referee should apparently award a corner kick. This is one of the intriguing facts we learn in Football’s Strangest Stories.
It is one of those books that are compiled on a variety of subjects seemingly with an eye to the gift market. Others in the series include Law’s Strangest Cases, Cricket’s Strangest Matches, Tennis’s Strangest Matches and Teachers’ Strangest Tales. Each chapter features a match whose story is told on between one and three pages—114 matches in all.
As a follower of football, I certainly found the book interesting. I was fascinated to discover from the Introduction that the very first official football club (Sheffield), when it was formed in 1857, had no other clubs to play against. Now that I think about it, that was inevitable, wasn't it? The solution was for Sheffield’s bachelors to play against their married men. To prevent players pushing each other with an open hand, the Sheffield club required players to hold a half-crown (two shillings and sixpence). Two-and-six was a significant sum of money—technically the equivalent of about £10 now but getting on for a day’s wage for a farm labourer then.
The book is a little disappointing in that many of the matches it includes were not all that strange—many were only mildly unusual or contained a strange incident. In January 1925, for instance, the FA experimented in some friendly games with two changes to the offside law: (1) reducing the number of defenders required to be between attacker and the goal-line from three to two and (2) drawing a line 40 yards from each goal within which the offside law would apply (rather than in the whole half). Unusual but not all that strange, it seems to me.
Often, the most interesting things are the strange and quirky facts about the history of football that emerge along the way. When penalties were first introduced, for example, amateur teams refused to defend them, saying that it impugned their honour to suggest that they had committed a deliberate foul. Originally goalkeepers were allowed to run towards the ball when the whistle blew for a penalty to be taken—sometimes getting there before the attacker.
The strange matches include ones in which two players were killed by lightning, strikers played against the police, a security alert led to a crowd of over a thousand evacuating the ground and watching a park game across the road, bored spectators tried to stop the game by keeping or hiding every ball that went into the crowd, one player scored all six of his sides goals only for the match to be abandoned and replayed, and more than one in which a team went down with food poisoning.
Surely one of the strangest matches ever played is one that is not included. It took place in Barbados on 7th January 1994. Barbados played Grenada in a qualifying round of the Caribbean Cup needing a two-goal margin of victory to qualify. With 3 minutes to go and Barbados winning 2-1, they deliberately scored an own goal to take the match into extra time. (No matches in this competition were allowed to end in draws.) That would give Barbados the opportunity to score a ‘golden goal’ in extra time, which, according to the rules of the competition, would count double and give them the two-goal victory they needed. Grenada, however, would go through instead if they won or lost by only one goal. Thus, Grenada spent the last three minutes of the 90 minutes trying to score a goal at both ends, while Barbados held out for three minutes valiantly defending both ends. Barbados went on to score their golden goal in extra time and win 4-2 to go through to the competition proper.
Despite the absence of that gem, Andrew Ward has collected an interesting and sometimes intriguing set of stories for a football fan, good for the bedside table and taking a dose of two or three not-too-taxing chapters before switching out the light.
It is one of those books that are compiled on a variety of subjects seemingly with an eye to the gift market. Others in the series include Law’s Strangest Cases, Cricket’s Strangest Matches, Tennis’s Strangest Matches and Teachers’ Strangest Tales. Each chapter features a match whose story is told on between one and three pages—114 matches in all.
As a follower of football, I certainly found the book interesting. I was fascinated to discover from the Introduction that the very first official football club (Sheffield), when it was formed in 1857, had no other clubs to play against. Now that I think about it, that was inevitable, wasn't it? The solution was for Sheffield’s bachelors to play against their married men. To prevent players pushing each other with an open hand, the Sheffield club required players to hold a half-crown (two shillings and sixpence). Two-and-six was a significant sum of money—technically the equivalent of about £10 now but getting on for a day’s wage for a farm labourer then.
The book is a little disappointing in that many of the matches it includes were not all that strange—many were only mildly unusual or contained a strange incident. In January 1925, for instance, the FA experimented in some friendly games with two changes to the offside law: (1) reducing the number of defenders required to be between attacker and the goal-line from three to two and (2) drawing a line 40 yards from each goal within which the offside law would apply (rather than in the whole half). Unusual but not all that strange, it seems to me.
Often, the most interesting things are the strange and quirky facts about the history of football that emerge along the way. When penalties were first introduced, for example, amateur teams refused to defend them, saying that it impugned their honour to suggest that they had committed a deliberate foul. Originally goalkeepers were allowed to run towards the ball when the whistle blew for a penalty to be taken—sometimes getting there before the attacker.
The strange matches include ones in which two players were killed by lightning, strikers played against the police, a security alert led to a crowd of over a thousand evacuating the ground and watching a park game across the road, bored spectators tried to stop the game by keeping or hiding every ball that went into the crowd, one player scored all six of his sides goals only for the match to be abandoned and replayed, and more than one in which a team went down with food poisoning.
Surely one of the strangest matches ever played is one that is not included. It took place in Barbados on 7th January 1994. Barbados played Grenada in a qualifying round of the Caribbean Cup needing a two-goal margin of victory to qualify. With 3 minutes to go and Barbados winning 2-1, they deliberately scored an own goal to take the match into extra time. (No matches in this competition were allowed to end in draws.) That would give Barbados the opportunity to score a ‘golden goal’ in extra time, which, according to the rules of the competition, would count double and give them the two-goal victory they needed. Grenada, however, would go through instead if they won or lost by only one goal. Thus, Grenada spent the last three minutes of the 90 minutes trying to score a goal at both ends, while Barbados held out for three minutes valiantly defending both ends. Barbados went on to score their golden goal in extra time and win 4-2 to go through to the competition proper.
Despite the absence of that gem, Andrew Ward has collected an interesting and sometimes intriguing set of stories for a football fan, good for the bedside table and taking a dose of two or three not-too-taxing chapters before switching out the light.
January 2, 2025
The Game With Two Referees Chester, January 1935
Two referees and two linesmen. The idea came from the Referees Committee. The game chosen for experiment England Amateur international trial between was an teams from the North and South. It was a bad choice. The
amateurs were so well-behaved that nothing tested. One clear-cut penalty was awarded, converted by Simms in the North's 3-1 win, but, otherwise, there were barely enough decisions for one referee, let alone two.
The referees at Chester were Dr A.W. Barton, a Repton schoolmaster from Derby, and Mr E. Wood of Sheffield, Early in the game they were tempted across the halfway line a few times before they realised their more limited responsibilities. Onlookers wondered what would happen if an incident occurred in one referee's half and the other was in a better position to judge. Who would decide then?
A second attempt was made later that season. The same two referees, Barton and Wood, were given control of a professional international trial, England against the Rest. Again the outcome was inconclusive as there was not enough work for two men. The Football Association might have learned more from a competition where the referees were stretched, perhaps at local-league level, rather than the games at Chester and West Bromwich.
Observers' reactions were generally negative. The idea never caught on, the detail was never worked out. The spectators would have needed to distinguish between the two referees (red whistle and yellow whistle?) to know whom to insult. Yet, had the idea been instigated, we might today have players voting in the dressing-rooms and sponsors offering a prize - Referee of the Match.
Two referees and two linesmen. The idea came from the Referees Committee. The game chosen for experiment England Amateur international trial between was an teams from the North and South. It was a bad choice. The
amateurs were so well-behaved that nothing tested. One clear-cut penalty was awarded, converted by Simms in the North's 3-1 win, but, otherwise, there were barely enough decisions for one referee, let alone two.
The referees at Chester were Dr A.W. Barton, a Repton schoolmaster from Derby, and Mr E. Wood of Sheffield, Early in the game they were tempted across the halfway line a few times before they realised their more limited responsibilities. Onlookers wondered what would happen if an incident occurred in one referee's half and the other was in a better position to judge. Who would decide then?
A second attempt was made later that season. The same two referees, Barton and Wood, were given control of a professional international trial, England against the Rest. Again the outcome was inconclusive as there was not enough work for two men. The Football Association might have learned more from a competition where the referees were stretched, perhaps at local-league level, rather than the games at Chester and West Bromwich.
Observers' reactions were generally negative. The idea never caught on, the detail was never worked out. The spectators would have needed to distinguish between the two referees (red whistle and yellow whistle?) to know whom to insult. Yet, had the idea been instigated, we might today have players voting in the dressing-rooms and sponsors offering a prize - Referee of the Match.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews