Millwall And FC Dallas Made This A Horrible Weekend Play Soccer

Written by Brandon Stroud / 04.15.13

FC Dallas

It wasn’t a great weekend for Texas sports. Aside from the horrible stuff that went down at the NRA 500, the generally serene-ish FC Dallas Stadium got violent when a player from … uh, FC Dallas scored a game-winning goal. Yeah, I don’t know.

George John scored the game-winner on a header, and before he could even get out of the net and celebrate, a fan tossed some garbage onto the field and sliced him in the back of the head.

John, 26, headed home the game’s only goal in the 87th minute, but he barely had time to celebrate. The bottle hit him as he took his first steps out of the Galaxy goal, and he fell straight to the ground.

“I knew something hit me,” John said. “I wasn’t quite sure what happened, if I ran into the post or what, but then I looked down and saw a beer bottle and I was like that had to of hit me. I felt [my head] and there was a ridge and then I was like ‘Yes, something hit me for sure.’ Luckily I didn’t need stitches and I was able to stay in and finish out the game.” (via NESN)

If you watch the video (included after the jump), it looks like a water bottle hits him in the chest and he flops, lying around holding his head while the time runs out. And then as the video progresses you see him get up with blood all over the back of his head. So … no.

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New Anti-Diving Strategy: If They Dive, Kick The Crap Out Of Them

Written by Brandon Stroud / 10.17.12

Soccer kick fightTo the untrained eye, soccer is a sport where people with no fight training or impulse control hang out and kick a ball around until one of them overreact and everybody starts brawling. I’m a soccer layman, so if I get any of this wrong, please don’t knock me to the ground or try to stomp my head.

In a U-13 (The Widowmaker!) match between Bahia and Vitoria, Bahia’s goalkeeper kinda-sorta punches a Vitoria strike in the back, so the striker sells it like he’s caught a knee to the chest from Anderson Silva. In retaliation, Bahia takes a Vitoria player to the ground and everyone tries to kick him in the face. Seems totally reasonable! From there, the fight escalates into a team versus team affair with everyone running in from off-screen to jump and kick indiscriminately. One guy gets a full-on Power Rangers jump kick to the back and ignores it in favor of running forward and kicking a different guy.

If none of this is soccer and I’ve misidentified a capoeira video, I apologize. That said, it’d be pretty awesome if other sports would handle flopping like this. Next time Blake Griffin goes down holding his eye, everyone on the court should get to boot him in the dome.

As an added bonus (so you don’t think Americans don’t play soccer exactly like this), here’s a clip of a Utah high school student pulling off a Million Dollar Man knee-lift during a soccer game.

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The Best Part Of Soccer Is When Everybody Punches Everybody Else

Written by Brandon Stroud / 05.31.12

usa-brazil-police-brutalityI almost called it “Boom, Headshot”.

This clip (by way of Dan Steinberg of The Washington Post) teaches a valuable lesson — if you are brave enough to run out onto the grass at FedEx Field during a U.S./Brazil friendly and start knee-sliding around in front of 67,000 people, don’t expect the police to calmly waltz up and arrest you. The soccer guys are friendly, not the cops. The video title describes it as “MUST SEE POLICE BRUTALITY”, but it’s closer to “MUST HIT THIS GUY AS HARD AS I CAN BECAUSE FOR F**K’S SAKE WHY DO PEOPLE KEEP DOING THIS”.

As an added bonus, here are a few other fans at the game freaking the hell out and getting arrested. Apparently one of the women in the clip bit a police officer. The guy in the background yelling “DON’T TASE ME, BRO” is especially helpful.

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Soccer Kicks: You’re Doing It Wrong

Written by Brandon Stroud / 07.27.11

An acrobatic soccer kick can be one of the most intensely athletic and beautiful things in the world of sports. Presented for your approval (as part of our continuing effort to write about the world’s most popular sport and the weird assholes who play it) are two examples of how true that is, and how unbelievably and epically horrible you look when you screw it up.

The first example (with a knee sock tip to Dirty Tackle) comes from the Barclays Asia Trophy semifinals between Chelsea and Kitchee, who are either soccer teams or teenage girls. Chelsea won the match 4-0, but the moment of the game (and perhaps the defining moment in effort leading to failure) comes from Yossi Benayoun. Watch closely at the :05 mark as Yossi approaches from the left. He goes for an overhead shot and kicks the ball directly into his face. I feel like any deeper analysis of the event would take away from its poetic sadness, although I’m tempted to type “Bend It like a mentally handicapped Beckham” and head to the photoshop.

Example two improves on Yossi’s game by eliminating the ball and kicking someone else’s face. The description, via Yardbarker:

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Bulgarian Role Models

Written by Brandon Stroud / 06.01.11

It’s important and interesting that two ridiculously oil-rich countries (Russia and Qatar) get awarded the World Cup and then it emerges that the FIFA judges who dole out such cherries are corrupt as f**k. Also interesting is the fact that the guy pissing all over the integrity of the world’s most popular sport is named “Blatter.” Because these are important things we need to cover, here is a video of former Bulgarian national team player Daniel Borimirov, a guy who played in the World Cup, starting a fight with a bunch of parents at a youth soccer game.

Highlights of the video include the kid throwing a paper cup at an adult for no reason near the end, the gym-class-quality Muay Thai kicks that get thrown whenever soccer people fight, and the invariable truth that a guy walking up to a group of local sports parents dressed like that is going to start a fight. If I was a European soccer player, I’d only dress in skinny jeans, sunglasses, and those rhinestone Afflicition-type shirts that look like they come from Dress Barn.

As someone who is just getting into soccer (go FC Dallas!) and has spent a month now writing about how insane it always is, I appreciate having something like this to find every week. What happenes next week? FIFA sells the World Cup to North Korea? Some guy from the Houston Dynamo stabs a referee with a flaming dagger, maybe in front of somebody’s field trip?

[h/t Off the Bench]

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‘Massive Soccer Brawl’ About What You’d Expect

Written by Brandon Stroud / 05.16.11

A huge fight broke out during the Mexican League’s Monarcas Morelia/Cruz Azul semifinals match when a fan ran onto the field to shake the hand of his favorite player, Gerardo Torrado. Torrado and the entire Cruz Azul team decided to attack the guy, and that’s when I lose the ability to accurately recap. What follow is chaos, with a bunch of guys dressed like loaves of bread (and all differently … I swear there are at least sixteen teams playing) running around taking swings at each other. A goalie headbutts somebody in the face. One guy breaks out a lucha libre thigh kick.

It’s basically the spiritual opposite of the Astros fan who ran out onto the field at Minute Maid Park and managed to get away. Imagine walking up to Ben Crane in the middle of a Masters put and having him turn around and start Muay Thai kickboxing you. Soccer By Ives adds the literary sprinkles:

Perhaps the best part? The fan who started it all was released by police after paying a $2.50 fine. Yes, you read that right (and to top it off, the fan, a 21-year-old college student, said in this interview that he’d now be a Morelia fan). You can’t make this stuff up.

Here are a few alternate angle videos of the fight, with a big H/T to SBN.

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