Until the age of 16, Mladen Bartolovic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Hejduk Split never played football. He was a basketball player and during the Bosinian War, there were no basketball club active. So he went to try his luck with soccer.
sebastian abreu played basketball before focusing on soccer. antonio de nigris was trying his luck at tennis and had played basketball before benito floro took him to monterrey. at the moment he is one of the top (if not top) scorers in turkey. much more low profiile, but carlos briones was a keepr in mexico who was interested in playing gridiron football for the the autonomous university of guadalajara (u.a. de g. , or tecos.) he has dabbled in soccer, but his passion was gridiron. he ended up becoming a pro keeper there and at tigres. podolski and klose are both from silesia. i wonder if this relates to them.
Romario was known for his partying lifestyles. However, according to Bobby Robson who was his coach at PSV, Romario does not drink and smoke. He only dances and drinks soft drinks at the night clubs. He partied the whole night, but also slept until late. So Romario actually had enough rest before every match. And since we mentioned gridiron, I am going to go into some NFL players and their soccer roots. Most Americans should know this. Sebastian Janikowski, the placekicker for the LA Raiders, used to be on the Polish under-17 team. He switched to gridiron after moving to the US as a HS student. More later............
The brother of NHL great Dominik Hašek is Martin Hašek who was capped 14 times by the the Czech Republic. Steve Nash's brother, Martin, also was capped by Canada. Julio Iglesias the singer was a goalkeeper for Real Madrid before suffering a career ending injury.
Last year, Ulrich van Gobbel, a defender on Holland's 1994 world cup squad, received a four month prison sentence for buying cars on credit and selling them on without paying the car company. The police have not been able to locate van Gobbel; he is believed to be in Suriname.
Boca Juniors used to wear black and white vertical striped shirts but so did another team in BA. so they played a match to see who would retain the colors. Boca lost and it was decided that they would use the colors of the 1st ship to enter the port in boca. it was a swedish ship and that is how they came to wear their classic azul Y oro shirts! Zinedine Zidane's eldest son is named after Uruguayan legend Enzo Francescoli who is Zidane idolized when Francesoli was playing for Marseille
Kevin Phillips now of West Bromich Albion but formerly of Aston Villa, Southampton, Sunderland and Watford was first noticed in a non League game playing for Baldock Town by scouts from Watford. He began his youth career as a defender, spefically a right back, with Southampton but was released and played non League for Baldock Town while working a second job (as most non Leaguers do) in a factory. He continued to play RB until one of Baldock Towns fowards suffered an injury during the pregame warm up and the manager asked the team who wanted to play up front. Phillips volunteered and several goals later was signed by Glenn Roeder, the then manager at Watford.
steve nash was voted best basketball and soccer player while in high school in canada. and i don't think julio has any regrets after his career ending injury, because at least he can walk now. oh, and the part about being the top-selling recording artist in spanish is good as well.
Gordon Ramsey was also a good footballer in his day and found his way into the kitchen after suffering a serious knee injury which prevented his career from developing further. Apparently Rangers were keen on him for a while.
The group match between Argentina and Chile at the inaugural World Cup in 1930 was believed to be the first ever recorded mass brawl in international football. Both teams were levelled on point after two matches, and the winner advanced to the semi-final. The brawl began after a foul by Luis Monti on Chile's Arturo Torres. Chile, not only eventually lost the match, was banned from international football for 5 years.
Bon Accord of Aberdeen suffered the worst defeat in a British senior football match losing 0-36 to Arbroath on 12th September 1885 in the 1st Round of the Scottish Cup. Strangely and amazingly that beat the 0-35 defeat of Aberdeen Rovers by Dundee Harps on the same day in the same competition!!
That is not true. Morten Andersen played soccer in Denmark as a kid, and, according to Wikipedia, barely missed playing for the Danish junior national team. And if you search for him at DBU, this is the only Morten Andersen you will get. http://www.dbu.dk/lbase/player.aspx Morten Bertolt, who used to play for FC Copenhagen, but now plays for Viborg.
Prior to the 2002 World Cup, hosts Korea had never won a single World Cup match. Now that's not a fact worthy of this thread. However, prior to the same 2002 World Cup, Korea had never scored a goal by a header. Cue Ahn Jung-hwan who scored Korea's first headed goal against the United States in Daegu during their group match stage to level the score and save the hosts some blushes. The second headed goal was scored again by ..Ahn.. and it counted more the second time after Ahn headed a Lee Young-pyo cross and outmanned the usually defensively sound Maldini to put Korea into the quarter-finals for the first and subsequently only time. Only two players have scored in two different World Cup final matches. Germany's Paul Breitner (1974 and the consolation goal in 1982); Zinedine Zidane for France (twice in 1998 and the penalty in 2006 prior to losing his head).
In 2002, Turkey became the first team since Bolivia in 1950 not to play against a European team throughout the tournament. In 1950, Bolivia played in a two team group! and lost 8-0 to Uruguay in their only match. In 2002, Turkey played the maximum amount of games, 7, but faced Brazil, Costa Rica, China, Japan, Senegal, Brazil again and South Korea. It happened again in 2006 with Croatia. They played Australia, Japan and Brazil and was eliminated in the group stage. And it will be a lot more common in the years to come with the decreasing number of European teams. All teams that have taken part in the World Cup have, at some point, played against a European team.
In contrast to my previous post, the following teams have only played European teams in their WC history. Egypt, 1934, 1990: Hungary, Holland, England, Ireland Dutch East Indies/Indonesia, 1938: Hungary Cuba, 1938: Romania, Romania, Sweden Kuwait, 1982: England, Czechoslovakia, France Honduras, 1982: Spain, Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia Canada, 1986: France, Soviet Union, Hungary Egypt is the only one of these countries who has participated more than once, but only with one game in 1934. Three of the six countries are from CONCACAF and three of the six countries have met Hungary as one of their (or their only) opponents. However, Canada is the only country to fit both criteria. I don't expect this list to be expanded since FIFA has decreased the number of European spots to less than half the participants and are seeding the teams to include a maximum of two European teams in any group. The last group with three European teams was in 1994, when Mexico faced Norway, Italy and Ireland.
Great stat about Turkey (rep on the way). I think that you either forget or didn't take into account pre-1950 WCs. In 1930 (only 4 European teams in the WC): France beat Mexico, lost to Argentina and Chile. Yugoslavia beat Brazil and Bolivia, advanced to the 1/2 finals and lost to Uruguay. Romania beat Peru and lost to Uruguay in a three team group (Uruguay advanced to the 1/2 finals). Belgium lost to USA and Paraguay. In 1938: Romania tie and loss to Cuba. Poland lost to Brazil. A great deal less interesting than 2002 Turkey.
I didn't take those early instances into consideration. The key fact is Turkey's amazing non-European run and I just went back from there to find the last time it happened, and that was more than 50 years ago! Then I pointed out that it had already happened again and will occur much more in the future because of the allocation of spots. In 2010, there will be 3 groups with only one European team and if any of those fail to progress, it will be the same. But the funny thing is the 1950-2002 span combined with the 1 >< 7 games played. But thanks for completing the list. Perfection is never a bad thing.
Add to that the fact that they manged to beat both hosts. 1:0 over Japan in the round of 16 and 3:2 over South Korea in the third place game. Clearly no one else has even done it since this is the only time the WC had two hosts. The only time a team faces the host twice: 1954 - Italy lost to Switzerland twice (group and group playoff)
Spanish singer Julio Iglesias was a a keeper for the Real Madrid youth ranks until a car accident ended his football career.
Just curious, does RSSSF Trivia has a section dedicated to vacated / un-awarded titles? If not, it may be a good idea to start one, the few occurences I can think of so far are: 2004/05 Serie A: Juve was stripped off title due to match-fixing and it wasn't awarded to another team: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_football_champions 1992/93 Ligue 1: Marseille was stripped off title due to match-fixing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligue_1#Previous_Winners 1991/92 French Cup: The final was not played (disaster at Furiani Stadium in Bastia): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Cup#Finals_result 1926/27 Serie A: Torino was stripped off title due to match-fixing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_football_champions 1908/1909 Scottish Cup: Crowd violence if I remembered correctly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Cup#Facts
Scottish player Ray "Tonka" Stewart is the only non-English player to have played for West Ham in their three FA Cup winning sides (1964, 1975, 1980). Cardiff City defeated Leeds United 2-1 at Elland Road in the 3rd Round of the FA Cup...... in 1956, 1957 and 1958!