It’s getting harder and harder to shock you with violent soccer stories. Soccer players are always either wiping their blood on each other or starting kung fu gang brawls or being blown up by grenades, so if you see a screengrab of a soccer stadium on fire, chances are you’ll scroll right by it without a second thought. Of COURSE soccer fans set fire to a stadium.

It all happened (in Russia!) on Sunday after Zenit St. Petersburg’s win over FK Volga. The visiting Zenit fans, happy about what they’d just zeen, celebrated by torching their own seats, then throwing wood into the fire while dudes with fire hoses tried to put it out. The best part? The incident occurred at the hilariously Russian-sounding “Lokomotiv Stadium”.

Fire services in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod were forced to put out a blaze after fans set fire to seats at Lokomotiv Stadium.

The incident occurred in the aftermath of the match between home side FK Volga and reigning league champions Zenit St Petersburg, which ended 2-1 to the visitors.

Following the conclusion of the game, Zenit fans seated in the away section set several seats alight, with police reporting that some 430 seats in that part of the stadium were broken or destroyed. (via ITV.com)

If you’re already pumping your fists and going FIRE, FIRE, FIREEEEE, here’s the clip. Warning: extremely Russian.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here we see Universitatea goalkeeper Mircea Bornescu responding to a questionable penalty and conversion from CFR Cluj like any of us would — by causing the match to be abandoned with a punch to the goal post, some parkour over an advertising board to attack the guy who just scored and a team masseuse ready to attack on command. In this assumption, we all have crazy rage issues.

That’s exactly what happened. CFR Cluj player Cadu converted on penalty in the 27th minute of a derby match and went behind the goal to celebrate. Bornescu thought he saw Cadu making “hostile gestures” at the fans and Spider-Man’d that ho*. The game was called, and the Universitatea’s masseuse jumped Cadu in the tunnel**.

So the next time you’re worried about the violence in the NHL, consider that nobody (to our knowledge) has ever had their on-site medical staff attack Alex Ovechkin with a skate.

[via Dirty Tackle]

*possibly a sexual reference
**not a sexual reference

A soccer riot in Cali which I suppose is unusual in that it wasn't a drug riot. Although when you're the capital of a cocaine cartel, your citizens probably get pretty excited about everything. Supporters of America de Cali thought there should have been a penalty called in the 82nd minute while supporters of Deportivo de Cali disagreed. 18 people were stabbed and 80 injured in the ensuing melee: 

You call that a riot? My fellow South Side Irishmen and I call that a parade. -KD

{Free green beer for 100& Injury Rate.}