Golaço Stories

The OFC (Oceania Football Federation) is the only one in the world without a single fully professional club. Australia is geographically part of the region but moved to the Asian federation in 2006. New Zealand has two professional clubs, Auckland FC and Wellington Phoenix, but they participate in the Australian A-League. As it stands the entire continental federation is either fully amateur or semi-amateur, but this seems like it's about to change thanks to the proposed OFC Professional League. The league was first proposed in 2019 and set to start in 2021 but got postponed to 2026 due to the Covid-19...

Just 24 miles off the southwestern coast of England lies an archipelago called Isles of Scilly (not to be confused with the Italian island of Sicily). The archipelago consists of over 140 tiny islands of which only 5 are inhabited with a combined population of around 2,100 people. Today the Isles of Scilly host the smallest official league in the world with just 2 participating teams. It all began in the 1920's with an Inter-Island Cup amongst all 5 of the inhabited islands, however by the 1950's only 2 teams survived. Those teams where called Rangers and Rovers, but by...

Around 12 years ago the Kurtanovic family moved from Serbia to the small German town of Florsheim am Main in big numbers. The teenagers of the Kurtanovic family immediately started playing for the youth team of the local club DJK Florsheim 2, who's professional team at that time played in the 5th tier of the German soccer pyramid. Eventually they grew up, left for college and started careers, but during the Summer of 2024 their lives would change. Haris Kurtanovic was invited to take over the management of the club, who now found itself in the 10th division and in...

In 1956 CONMEBOL, the South American confederation, organized a cup who's purpose was to strengthen the competition between the continent's strongest nations: Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. Paraguay was later included as well after the first edition. The Atlantic Cup was played three times, one in 1956, then in 1960 and lastly in 1976. In all three occasions Brazil took the title with Argentina coming second, while Uruguay and Paraguay alternated between 3rd and 4th place. The first edition in 1956 also featured a parallel cup for clubs, the Atlantic Cup for Clubs which featured five clubs from each of the...

Kaiser Chiefs, indie rock band from Leeds, has an interesting connection to African soccer. More specifically, as the name suggests, with the South African giant Kaizer Chiefs FC. The band was formed in 1996 with the name Runston Parva, after a small village in Yorkshire, and later got shortened to just Parva. In 2003 however, due to complications with record labels, the band decided to they needed a complete rebrand. The band members were huge Leeds United fans and at that time the club legend was Lucas Radebe. Radebe was playing his 10th consecutive season for Leeds, becoming both team captain...