North Korea soccer lightning

(artist's rendering)

Pure energy has a name: the North Korean women’s soccer team.

Most of the time when a sports team loses an important game, you’ll hear them talk about how they “went out there and played [their] game” and just lost focus or didn’t play hard enough on defense. Sometimes they’ll say the other team did a good job. Following his team’s 2-0 loss to the U.S. in the women’s World Cup on Tuesday, North Korean Kim Kwang-min redefined hilarious post-game excuses by claiming his team lost because they were struck by lightning. By lightning.

“When we stayed in Pyongyang during training there was an unexpected accident so our team was not capable of playing. Our players were hit by lightning during a training match. More than five were hospitalized. The match was on 8 June.”

The United States team were clearly taken aback by the claim. “It’s the first we have heard about it,” said the striker Abby Wambach. The USA coach, Pia Sundhage, was also unaware of any such problems affecting their opponents.

I think “the dog ate my soccer team” would’ve been an equally good excuse. I feel like if an entire team had been struck by some crazy Nemesis Rage lightning during training, they probably should’ve (and would’ve) sat out the game completely. If I got struck by lightning I would sit out of everything for the rest of my life. The best post-match quote of all wasn’t even about the lighting.

Kim: “They will play with high spirits and strong will, a strong will you cannot expect from human kind.”

… and then he shoved them into a big mud puddle.

[h/t Sports Grid]