In the strangest of club seasons, the race to be the English Premier League’s top marksman has been a competition between trusted standbys — Harry Kane and Mohamed Salah have both finished top of the chart before — and emerging stars hungry to take the throne, like Bruno Fernandes and Dominic Calvert-Lewin. England’s top division is unmatched in its quality and global reach and the Premier League top scorers 2020-21 list justifies the hype.
With the Laws of the Game going back nearly 160 years, it’s interesting to look at the ways in which things have been codified, historicized and transposed. One particular offshoot has been the use of stars above team crests. What are the stars above football badges? On the one hand, the answer is exceptionally simple, but like I said, we’ve had some interesting developments and deployments over the years.
“Variety is the spice of life,” someone once said before doing something obviously stupid and dangerous. But with danger and stupidity comes ingenuity and joy, and that’s the common thread that connects the majority of these bastardized forms of soccer. Here are 10 variants of the beautiful game that are strangely captivating.
#1. Eisfussball
The greatest footballing nation to have never won the World Cup? It’s the Netherlands. The Oranje have thrice reached the final, losing to hosts West Germany in ’74, hosts Argentina in ’78 and Spain in 2010. The most famous of those defeats came against the Germans, because this was a tournament that had been turned into a pageant for the Dutch vision of Total Football.
Oliver Kahn collected 86 appearances for Germany and 429 for Bayern Munich. Twice he finished third in Ballon d’Or voting — a sensational achievement for a goalkeeper. So, when Kahn reveals what the greatest goal ever scored on him was, we should all be paying attention.
Having called time on his playing days back the 2008, the now 47-year-old shot stopper took to Twitter to celebrate the anniversary of that goal.
“Exactly 23 years ago today is this sensational goal from Jay-Jay Okocha — and I’m still dizzy…” said Kahn.
Diving in soccer certainly predates the 1974 FIFA World Cup final, but on no other occasion has the ramifications of a flop been so clearly encapsulated and amplified.
The 1974 World Cup in West Germany served as a pageant for the Netherlands technique of Total Football, the tactical theory envisioning a side in which any outfield player can quickly take over the role of any other player on the pitch.
The late 19th century to the end of the apartheid era in South Africa saw the rise of townships, urban living areas, built on the periphery of towns and cities. Reserved for non-whites, these sprawling and often underdeveloped slums were contrived as separate living spaces for working class and unemployed black, colored and Indian inhabitants.
Townships were also referred to as locations or lokasie in Afrikaans. Lokasie gave way to the colloquial term kasi, a word which now encompasses the flavor and distinct style of the townships.