Golaço Stories

       Dejan Petkovic's career followed the script of many Eastern-European players. He started in his towns local team, moved on to national giant Red Star Belgrade, and eventually made his way to Real Madrid. At the time, Real Madrid had too many foreigners on its roster, forcing Petkovic to get loaned out a few times and eventually demoted to the Real Madrid Castilla, the clubs "B Team".  While at Castilla, he played a friendly match against Brazilian club Vitoria and had a phenomenal performance, so much so that Vitoria made an official offer for Petkovic. The Serbian attacking...

       Ronaldo is undoubtedly one of greatest to ever play the game, and his resumé speaks for itself. However, "O Fenomeno" didn't end his career in a glamourous fashion. After decades of glory for the national team and European clubs, in 2009 Ronaldo returned to Brazil to play for Corinthians. His first couple of seasons great, many goals scored and a few trophies lifted, and in 2011 the club had returned to the Copa Libertadores qualifying for the preliminary round just before the group stages. The draw was favorable, they would face Tolima from Colombia, a small team...

      Even though it has star players and historic clubs, La Liga is one of the most predictable leagues in terms of champions. Their domestic cup, the Copa del Rey, isn't very different, even though there is more variety in the champions you still don't see deep runs from lower division teams like you do in other countries. In the 2001/02 season we saw the exception that confirms the rule. UE Figueres, a team from a town of 46,000 people who has never featured in the Spanish top flight, made it to the semi-finals eliminating all-powerful Barcelona along the...

       In 1987 tragedy struck in Peru. A flight that was brining back Alianza Lima from an away match crashed and resulted in the death of 43 people including 16 players as well as directors and coaching staff. Alianza was sitting at the top of the table at that moment, and after a month of grieving the local federation determined that the league must resume. Alianza Lima struggled to find proper players to complete their newly formed roster and that's when an unlikely gesture of solidarity created a timeless bond. Colo-Colo, from Chile, stepped in and loaned 4 players...

       Contrary to popular belief, a nation does not need to be fully independent in order to have a national team that participates in official tournaments. Gibraltar and Faroe Islands, for example, are British and Danish territories respectively and not entirely sovereign states, however they still compete in UEFA and FIFA tournaments.  This gives hope to the beautiful island of Greenland, who's been desperately trying to associate itself to FIFA for the past 30 years but the harsh weather and a small population of 55,000 people have always gotten in the way. With a lot of work in past...