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Sports Trivia - Soccer / Football

[ more Soccer Humor ]

• Shirt swapping was once officially prohibited at the World Cup in 1986 because FIFA did not want players to 'bare their chests' on the field.

• The most common surname of World Cup players is Gonzalez or Gonzales.

• The Romanian team in World Cup 1930 were selected by their King. The 'football-crazy' King Carol II of Romania personally selected the team, and asked the employers to grant each player a three-month leave with full pay.

• The USA trainer had to be carried off unconscious during the 1930 World Cup Semi-Final against Argentina after he ran to the pitch to attend an injured player, dropped his medicine box, and broke a bottle of chloroform. When he tried to pick up the broken bottle, he took in the fumes and fell to the ground immediately. The injured player recovered without any treatment.

• Thousands of Argentinian supporters failed to attend the 1930 World Cup Final as their boats were delayed due to thick fog. Eight of the ten chartered boats were unable to arrive in time for the Final, though fortunately the match referee was on the first boat that arrived.

• Uruguay and Argentina tossed up before the 1930 World Cup Final to choose the ball, as both teams wanted to use their own 'home-made' ball in the Final. Argentina won and their ball was used in the first half and the Uruguayan ball the second half.

• Italian player Raimondo Orsi went back to the stadium the day after the 1934 World Cup Final to demonstrate his spectacular curling shot, as the press photographers wanted to take a picture of Orsi's swerving shot that had turned into a winning goal in the Final. He tried more than 20 times to repeat that splendid shot on the same spot, but failed each time.

• To prevent the Nazis from confiscating the golden Jules Rimet World Cup Trophy, Dr. Ottorino Barassi, an Italian sports official, smuggled the trophy from the bank in Rome, and hid it under his bed for most of the war time before the 1950 World Cup.

• India withdrawal from the 1950 World Cup finals as they were not allowed to play in bare feet. They have not had the chance to compete again since.

• USA beat England 1-0 in the 1950 World Cup finals, though some British newspapers reported the result as USA 1, England 10 as the editor believed that the reporter had made a typing mistake. Before the match, both sides believed that it would be an easy win for England, and double-digit goals were expected. This match is now considered by many people as the greatest upset in World Cup history.

• A rooster, the symbol of the French team, was thrown onto the field by a fan during the World Cup match between France and Canada on 1 June, 1986. The rooster was dead when the referee removed it out of the pitch. France won the match 1-0.

• After playing with Spain in a World Cup qualifying match in 1993, the Albanian coach asked his players not to swap shirts, as they had no money to make new shirts, and wanted to save the shirts for the next match. As was as not having a full complement of shirts, the financially beleaguered Albanian team also had to go to the stadium at their own expense.

• Before returning home after the World Cup 2002 finals, the Senegalese team visited Taiwan, for diplomatic reasons. Senegal is one of the 28 countries in the world which recognize Taiwan as a nation. During a red-carpet reception at the Taiwanese president's office, some players wore shorts and sandals. A scheduled friendly match between these two nations was cancelled because many Senegalese players did not want to play. Thirty-seven call girls were said to have entered the players' hotel rooms during their two-day visit.

• Ronaldo changed his hair style after Brazil beat England in the 2002 World Cup Quarter Finals so as to look more different from his teammate Roberto Carlos. He wanted to have a new look because his son Ronald had wrongly recognized Roberto Carlos as Ronaldo -  their toddler son kissed the TV screen shouting 'daddy' when Roberto Carlos appeared on TV during the quarter final match.