WTF

Everyone’s got at least one — one memory from playing soccer they just can’t get out of their head, one moment in time they regularly ruminate over years after the fact. 

There are bad calls in every match and then there are the incidents that do not fade from memory. Everyone who has played the game for any length of time has at least one moment of madness from a ref they’ll never forget.

So we at The18 have compiled a list of the worst officiating decisions we’ve ever seen, to let you know you are not alone in your constant chewing over that one call so many years ago. 

We all get creeped out from time to time when we go to Google to search for something and after three letters it already knows you’re wondering “how fast is mbappe” or “why is my poop green.” 

But sometimes we get creeped out by what others are searching for, and as it turns out, soccer fans are searching for some fucked up shit. 

Pelé’s always been everywhere. As a player, he appeared at four World Cups spanning three different continents, his Santos side traveled around the world like the Harlem Globetrotters and he even ventured into the backwoods of American soccer with the New York Cosmos. 

But he truly achieved an omnipresence after retiring and transitioning into life as the OG Cristiano Ronaldo, hawking goods and services like a door-to-door salesman while collecting honorary degrees for his contributions to the bicycle kick sciences.

Disgraced former USMNT manager Jürgen Klinsmann has doubled down on his belief that he had the nation “in a good place” and on track for “the final four” at the 2018 World Cup despite his final game in charge — a 4-0 defeat to Costa Rica in San José — echoing through time as the second-most abject, clueless performance in the history of the program (the nadir being that night in Couva).

Wendie Renard, one of the best center backs in the game, has lost a major trophy, apparently stolen from her suitcase on a train.

To coincide annually with The Guardian’s excellent list of the 100 best male footballers in the world — compiled by a panel of 239 experts from 63 different nations — we here at The18 have compiled our own list over the last few years. There are no experts involved, there’s no rhyme or reason for anything, but we do hope you’ll join us on this adventure into the bowels of the beautiful game.

Liverpool won its first Club World Cup title with a 1-0 extra-time win over Brazil’s Flamengo on Saturday. It was Liverpool’s first intercontinental title but few in the U.S. were afforded an opportunity to watch it live.

Because Fox still shows a hatred for soccer, as we’ve lamented for more than two years, the American broadcaster chose to show three different college basketball games instead of the Club World Cup on Saturday.