1. Seeing England and Belgium will have easier knock-out games if they come second in the group, it’s in both teams’ interest to lose on Thursday. Here follows a thread of my favourite thing in football - teams losing on purpose.
2. One of the oddest matches ever is Barbados v Grenada in the Caribbean Cup in 1994. That match had a bizarre rule which meant that golden goals in extra time count double.
3. Barbados needed to win by two goals, and went 2-1 up in the 77th minute. As they struggled to get the goal they needed, they realised that if the scores were level, they’d have an extra 30 minutes to do it.
4. You can guess what happened next. Here’s the deliberate own goal and it’s as amazing as you’d imagine:
5. Grenada knew they needed to either win or lose by one. So for the last few minutes, they tried to score in either goal, while Barbados were defending both ends.
6. It finished level and went to extra-time - and amazingly, Barbados’ plan worked. They scored the golden goal that counted double and went through. That golden goal rule was cancelled very soon afterwards.
7. A similar situation to England’s was Thailand v Indonesia in the 1998 Tiger Cup. They were both already qualified, but the winner would play a tough Vietnam side, while the loser would play surprise group winners, the weaker Singapore.
8. With the game at 2-2, in the last minute Indonesia defender Mursyid Effendi deliberately scored an own goal to lose the game, despite the Thailand attackers trying to stop him. Here’s it is:
9. Pleasingly, both teams were beaten in the next round. Effendi was banned from international football for life.
10. But here’s the best one: In 2002, AS Adema v SO l'Emyrne in Madagascar. After being denied victory in the previous game by a controversial last-minute penalty, SOE decided to protest by scoring own goals throughout the entire game.
11. How many own goals do you reckon you could manage in one game? 20? 30?
SOE scored 149 own goals in the 90 minutes. 149-0! Sadly, no footage exists of this masterpiece.
SOE scored 149 own goals in the 90 minutes. 149-0! Sadly, no footage exists of this masterpiece.
12. So could England do the same? Well, we can certainly go some way to scoring a series of embarrassing own goals, simply by picking Phil Jones for the Belgium game.
