Unusual Facts About Soccer

The popularity of football makes FIFA World Cup the world’s most viewed sporting event. Football is being played in more than 200 nations. In an average, 250 million people play football across the globe all year round. Being both Olympic and Paralympic sport, football is quite famous in the online world as a fantasy football sport.

Let us tell you some facts about soccer which will make your online fantasy football games more interesting:

Read on the few facts:

The largest Football tournament saw no less than 5,098 teams. They competed in 1999 for the second Bangkok League Seven-a-Side Competition. Over 35,000 players participated.

Based on video evidence, one of the fastest ever scored was in 2.8 seconds by Ricardo Olivera (Uruguay) in December 1998.

The maximum number of goals scored by one player in a single fantasy leagues Football match was 16. It scored by Stephan Stanis (France) playing for Racing Club de The lens in December 1942.

Football players run an average of 9.65 km during every game.

Football goalies didn’t have to wear different coloured shirts from their teammates until 1913.

The World’s First Football Club was the English Sheffield Football Club. It was founded in 1857 by Colonel Nathaniel Creswick and Major William Priest, two British Army officers.

The very first game of basketball was played with a soccer ball.

The highest-scoring game was clocked 149-0. Stade Olympique de L’emyrne, a team from Madagascar scored their own goals. They did it as a form of protest for the unfair decision by referee in the previous game.

European Teams have reached every World Cup final, except for the finals of 1930 and 1950.

Celestine Babayaro, Nigerian born Chelsea player injured his legs while celebrating his debut goal in a pre-season match, while Luigi Riva broke a spectator’s arm with his powerful shot.

Ronaldinho came into limelight when scored 23 goals in a 23-0 game when he was only

Pele was the first to call football “the beautiful game”.

The first black football player was Arthur Wharton in the 1800s.

Some more of them:

England came up with the word “soccer”. It’s a shortened version of “Association Football” that was changed to “Assoc Football”. This was changed to “Soccer”. In 19th century England, it was popular to add the “-er” sound to shortened words.

Only Americans and Canadians call football “soccer”.

In 1998, lightening killed an entire football team. The catastrophe occurred in Congo during a match between the villages of Bena Tshadi and nearby Basangana. 

In 1964, a referee’s call during a football match in Peru caused a riot that killed over 300 people.

The Portuguese boast of scoring the world’s greatest goals to game ratio of 1.77. The team has found the net an incredible 331 times in just 187 games for Sporting Lisbon between 1937 and 1949 (compared to Messi’s 0.82 for Barcelona).

ASEC Abidjan of Cote d’Ivoire was unbeaten for 108 games between 1989 and 1994.

Neil Armstrong originally wanted to take a football to the moon – but NASA deemed it to be un-American.

Globally, there are 27 professional football clubs that take a Beatles song as their nickname – Villarreal in Spain being the most famous (the Yellow Submarines).

The ball used in professional football has remained exactly the same size and shape for 120 years – 28inches in circumference.

Happy reading!