Step into the coliseum of humankind’s definitive sport, where the gladiators are not always the players but the awesome fans as well. Whether you’re rooting for West Ham United, Barcelona or Juventus, it doesn’t take a Luciano Pavarotti to turn your ordinary stadium into an extraordinary opera house of fans roaring out their love.
Here are The18’s most epic terrace moments. Feel free to chant along, just don’t wake up your neighbors.
Usually when a new manager is introduced to a club, he or she likes to shake things up a little bit. In these five situations, though, the new manager shook things up more than anyone was expecting.
Since the turn of the 21st century, it’s happened without fail: every World Cup, three nations that began the tournament ranked in FIFA’s top 20 have been unceremoniously dumped from the competition at the group stage. In fact, in two of the four World Cups this century, three of the world’s top 10 ranked sides have capitulated before the knockout rounds.
Here’s a rundown of the three highest ranked sides to fall at the first hurdle in the last four tournaments:
2002
For over a century now, soccer has cultivated much of our pride and joy. The beautiful game, along with music, peanut butter and Netflix, is humanity’s pride and joy. However, with all the cheers and smiles, soccer comes with a dark side and over here, rainbows and sunshine are replaced with shame and disgrace. How far into the rabbit hole are you willing to go?
Take the red pill and enjoy The18’s list of the most disgraceful soccer moments . . . just remember, you might not like what you find.
During Racing Club’s 5-0 defeat of Patronato in the Argentine Primera Division on Sunday, 20-year-old forward Lautaro Martinez — who just received his first Argentina call-up and is reportedly being heavily courted by both Borussia Dortmund and Inter Milan — provided the play of the weekend with just two delicate touches of the ball.
His intricate little tippy tap sent the ball through the legs of the defender, ending his life and sending his soul down the river Styx.
Welcome to the World Cup! We’ve all come to think of this soccer extravaganza as one where countries compete in a civilized tournament but let’s face it, the World Cup is the Sunday League of planet Earth. A league where all the unique children of the neighborhood come out to play some footie, and they’re only unique because their mothers said so. What could possibly go wrong?
While everyone comes to football in different ways, it is most often a family sport, passed down from one generation to the next. So it’s no surprise that famous footballers have kids who are just as passionate about the sport. These famous football sons proved to be better than their fathers.
This past week, supporters of both England and Iceland were left to fear for their World Cup futures after injuries to one-man strike force Harry Kane and talismanic playmaker Gylfi Sigurdsson, respectively.
Kane will return in four weeks while Sigurdsson will be out for six to eight, meaning they should both be available in Russia, but it just goes to show how terrifying these last two months of the club season are in a World Cup year.
It’s the debate that was probably triggered by Liam Neeson’s outstanding performance in The Grey: could a man, equipped with only his wit, will to survive and a totally healthy sense of self-worth, kill a wolf in single combat? For Neeson, the answer was yes, although an entire den of wolves proved a few wolves too many.
The haters said this concept would never work as an article. "You'll never find 10 footballers who could conceivably be compared to restaurant chains via different quirks that they have, and even if you did, Facebook's algorithm would do to that article what white American settlers did to the buffalo herds roaming the Great Plains in the 1800s. Sure, it worked with clubs but it will never work with players."
The haters, as usual, were wrong.