Golaço Stories

June 30th 2002 will forever be remembered in the world of soccer as the day Brazil beat Germany 2-0 in the World Cup final and added a 5th star to its' crest. It is not as remembered, however, that on that same day another match was played between FIFA's two worst ranked nations: Bhutan and Montserrat. The story of how this match came to be begins with the fact that Netherlands failed to qualify for the 2002 World Cup. Two Dutch ad-agents then had the idea to promote a friendly match between the two worst nations in the world, hoping...

In 1993 a new era for Palmeiras would begin in Brazil. Italian dairy giant Parmalat would invest heavily in the club and lead them to a decade of glory. Coincidentally (or not), around the same time Palmeiras would switch their jersey manufacturer from Adidas to the unknown Rhumell. There was a series of issues with this new obscure local brand. First of all, it seemed like a blatant knock-off of the Danish brand Hummel, in Portuguese both names are read exactly the same. In addition, during its first year Rhumell even used the same logo, the distinct arrows that are...

Any casual soccer fan has at least heard of the term "golden goal", the rule that states that when a game ends in a draw and goes to overtime whoever scores first automatically wins the match. The rule was not mandatory, but could be adopted by the organizers of any tournament.  The golden goal rule can be traced back all the way to the 1800's, but it was only officially adopted by FIFA in 1993. The first time it was ever used was in the 1993 FIFA U20 World Cup, when Australia eliminated Uruguay in the quarter-finals. When the MLS...

Auckland City is best described as a big fish in a small pond. Ever since Australia moved to the AFC in 2006, Auckland City from New Zealand became the dominant club in the Oceania region. The OFC is almost entirely amateur, so naturally a club who already dominates its domestic league in the richest country of the region also dominates the continent. As a result Auckland City is almost a guaranteed participant of the FIFA Club World Cup, holding the record of the competition of 12 participations as of 2024. The number could actually be 14 if it wasn't for two...

In 2014 Romania received alarming news, the country had one of the highest school drop-out rates in the European Union: 18%. From that point on multiple campaigns were made by the local government and non-profits to raise awareness and try to keep those numbers as down as possible. In 2016 Geometry Global Bucharest had a very creative idea along with the Romanian Football Federation that was welcomed by every with open arms. First they came out with a textbook with soccer themed math problems to show children how math is used everywhere. The second step was that the Romanian National...