To 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.
I guess the yelling GOAAAAAAAAAL thing is the best part of being a soccer announcer, but I feel like if I watched a guy try to jump into the stands and end up trapped in a field-side bush I’d stop screaming for a second and say something about it. I don’t know, ask if he’s okay, laugh at him, something.
