Golaço Stories

         Certain international matches, such as San Marino x Moldova for example, are seen by the casual fan as very alternative. But what if I told you it can get much more obscure, beyond FIFA and beyond conventional geography? CONIFA (Confederation of Independent Football Associations) organizes the world of soccer for unrecognized autonomous regions, indigenous populations, immigrant communities, isolated cultures, and more. Here are a few examples that showcase who the CONIFA members are: While Argentina plays the FIFA World Cup, the Armenian Argentine Community plays the CONIFA World Cup. Same goes for the Mapuche Football Team,...

       Meet the Liga de Balompie Mexicano, Mexico's alternative, independent soccer league that has nothing to do with Liga MX, the Mexican Federation or FIFA. The league was founded in 2020 with the goal of giving opportunity to players who didn't get a spot in the existing professional clubs, as well as clubs who didn't meet the minimum requirements to participate in the existing pyramid. The initial idea seemed interesting, after all 3 division for a country of 126 million people doesn't seem like enough. They even managed to revive, and include, tradition clubs such as Veracruz and Toros...

          As we all know, aside from fan apparel or promotional material, sponsorships are not allowed on national team jerseys. In the beginning of the 1980's however, the Brazilian Confederation received a sponsorship of 3 million USD from the Brazilian Coffee Industry, a fortune for the time. A jersey with the company's coffee leaf logo was made (as seen in the picture above with Pele's billboard) but FIFA quickly banned it. The confederation decided that the solution was to bend the rules, they redesigned the crest with the Jules Rimet trophy and inserted the logo inside of it...

         The year is 2002 and the local league in Madagascar is coming to an end. In the second to last matchday SO l'Emyrne tied 2-2 with a very dubious last-minute penalty awarded to the opposing team, the draw meant l'Emyrne had no more shot at the title. In the last match, with the champion already crowned, SO l'Emyrne decided to do the unthinkable as a sign of protest: the players began scoring against their own net. Not once, or twice, or ten times, but 149 times nonstop. The final result was 149-0, and the opposing team...

       What if I told you there's a soccer stadium out there that's nearly three times the size of Wembley, Maracanã, Camp Nou or the Azteca? The real soccer nerds out there might already be thinking of the 1st of May Stadium, where the North Korean National Team plays, which seats about 114,000 people, but there's another on out there with twice the capacity.  I introduce to you the Great Strahov Stadium, in Prague, Czech Republic. This stadium has a capacity for 250,000 fans (56,000 seated), fits within it 9 full size fields and has a total size of...