Soccer
The 10 craziest things ever to happen on a football pitch
From easily distracted goalkeepers to Zidane's famous farewell headbutt, sometimes things on the pitch take a turn for the strange.
What do you expect to see when you watch a football match? Goals? Some full-blooded tackles? Maybe a card or two? That all seems perfectly reasonable. Every now and then, though, something happens on the pitch that nobody could have predicted. Here are 10 of the craziest incidents ever to take place inside a beautiful game of two halves.
1. Goalkeeper checks his phone
Apparently your average millennial checks their phone 150 times a day, but they're not usually playing in goal for Brazilian side Atlético Paranaense when they do it. Just before kick off in a recent Serie A game, the team's goalkeeper was spotted fiddling with his mobile inside the six-yard box. Was he posting a selfie on Instagram? Checking the scores elsewhere? Whatever it was, he managed to do it while wearing his gloves. Impressive.
2. Armed owner confronts ref
Everyone's seen a manager get sent to the stands for overly exuberant objections to a decision that hasn't gone his team's way, but when PAOK had a goal disallowed in the 89th minute against rivals AEK Athens, it wasn't the manager who caused a scene. The Greek side's owner stormed on to the pitch to make his feelings known to the referee, which is bad enough on its own, but he did so with a gun holstered on his waist. He's since been banned from football stadiums for three years.
3. Zidane sees red
How do you mark the end of your career when you've spent most of it being hailed as one of the greatest players of all time? By getting sent off in a World Cup final for headbutting an opponent, of course. Having lifted football's biggest prize with France in 1998, Zinedine Zidane ended his second World Cup final appearance early by doing his best billy goat impression. His victim, Italian defender Marco Materazzi, had unwisely insulted the Frenchman's sister.
4. Di Canio pushes it too far
When Paolo Di Canio signed for Sheffield Wednesday in 1997, it was supposed to be his football skills that would make the headlines, but the controversial Italian is probably best remembered for an incident in a match against Arsenal a year later. Having been shown a red card for his part in a melee started by Wim Jonk and Patrick Vieira, Di Canio pushes referee Paul Alcock in the chest and sends him tumbling. The hot-headed striker was fined £10,000 and banned for 11 matches.
5. Drone disturbs Serbia v Albania
If you're being picky, this one is above a football pitch rather than on it, but what it sparks down below is pretty crazy indeed. During a qualifier for Euro 2016 between Serbia and Albania, a drone carrying a banner concerning disputed territory between the two countries was flown into the stadium. After Serbian defender Stefan Mitrović snatched it down, a brawl ensued involving players, substitutes, stewards and members of the crowd. The match was abandoned and Serbia were awarded a 3–0 victory.
6. James and the giant grasshopper
There have been lots of animal-based pitch invasions over the years – a cat at Anfield, a squirrel at the Etihad, a goat during a game in the Sudanese top flight – but this uninvited guest at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil takes some beating. Hitching a ride on Colombian player James Rodríguez's arm after he'd scored a penalty at the Maracana, the giant grasshopper was probably attempting to put the Colombians off their game. It worked – they lost 2–1 to the hosts.
7. Eden Hazard versus a ball boy
Time wasting has become one of football's darkest arts, with everything from feigned injury to slow walking off the pitch when being substituted used to run the clock down. In a Capital One Cup game between Chelsea and Swansea in 2013, even the ball boy got in on the act, laying on top of the ball to use up a few precious seconds. Eden Hazard didn't see the funny side, however, and kicked it out from underneath him, earning a red card for his troubles.
8. French ref kicks out
Football's a competitive sport so it's not unusual for scrapes and scuffles to break out during a game, but they don't tend to involve the referee. During a Ligue 1 game earlier this year between PSG and Nantes, French ref Tony Chapron collided with Diego Carlos and took a tumble. The coming together looked innocuous enough, but as Chapron hit the turf he kicked out at the Nantes defender, before getting up and having the gall to send the player off. Perhaps it was revenge for what Paulo Di Canio did to Paul Alcock.
9. Bayer Leverkusen's ghost goal
Football is a simple game. To score you must make the ball cross the goal line, but usually it has to go between the posts. Not so for Stefan Kießling. In a 2013 Bundesliga game against Hoffenheim, the German striker got on the end of a corner and headed the ball goalwards. In the next instance the ball is in the back of the net, but on closer inspection the ball had hit the side netting and somehow found its way into the goal. Even the scorer himself seemed perplexed, and appeared to point it out to the referee, but the official awarded the so-called 'ghost goal' regardless.
10. Mutiny at St James' Park
Fights during football matches aren't completely unheard of, but they tend to be between players from opposing teams. Not at Newcastle United. During a 3–0 defeat at home to Aston Villa in 2005, Kieron Dyer and Lee Bowyer came to blows after the latter repeatedly refused to pass to the former. Proper school boy stuff. Manager Graeme Souness came into the dressing room after both had been sent off and offered to fight the pair of them. That'll fix it.