Know the score – score an own goal

As anyone who is interested in soccer knows, own goals are a fact of life. Accidental own goals at any rate. Looking at the many examples on Youtube shows you how misdirected clearances, wayward back passes, and wicked deflections end up nestling in the player’s own net. But players who deliberately score own goals are viewed with great distrust. In 2006, there was an uproar in the English Premiership when the then Chelsea defender William Gallas allegedly threatened to score an own goal during a game if Chelsea didn’t give him a transfer away from Stamford Bridge. Thankfully, Arsene Wenger bought Gallas so the threat was never put to the test.

 

There have been occasions though when whole teams have decided that scoring an own goal is the best way for them to progress in a cup competition. The first instance of this was in the Shell Caribbean Cup match between Barbados and Grenada in 1994. In the last group game before the final stages Barbados needed to beat Grenada by two clear goals to qualify otherwise Grenada went through in their place. Sadly, the organizers of the tournament had come up with a weird rule – in extra time a golden goal would count as two goals. So…

 

Barbados went 2-0 up fairly quickly and looked to be heading though to the next phase. But then Grenada made it 2-1 with seven minutes remaining and the Barbados team needed to score a goal, in either net! They decided to attack their own goal and with the Grenadans not catching on what was happening, Barbados scored an own goal to make it 2-2 and the game appeared to be heading for extra time.

 

So Grenada needed to score a goal at either end to go through. Desperate  defending of both penalty areas by Barbados meant that after 90 minutes the score was 2-2.  

 

In extra time, Barbados decided to attack the Grenadan net rather than their own. With Grenada not used to this, Barbados scored the golden goal four minutes into extra time to win the match 3-2 (or 4-2 according to the rules of the tournament). Barbados qualified.  

 

A similar incident occurred in a 1998 Tiger Cup game between Thailand and Indonesia. Both teams had already qualified for the semi-finals, but whichever team won would have to face the favourites Vietnam. So both teams tried to throw the match. At 2-2 with a few minutes left, the Indonesians turned on their own goal, now defended frantically by Thai players. In injury time the Indonesian keeper managed to grab the ball in the penalty area and kicked it into his own goal so that Thailand won 3-2.  

 

In the end neither team benefited. Both Indonesia and Thailand lost their semi-final games – to Singapore and Vietnam. Both teams were fined $40,000 for "violating the spirit of the game." The Indonesian goalkeeper was banned for life.

 

But you have to leave the best until last.

 

Stade Olympique de l’Emyrne (SOE), Antananarivo is the football section of a Malagasy sports club based in Antananarivo in Madagascar. The club won the Madagascan league in 2001. So they weren’t a bad side when they played another Malagasy team, AS Adema, on October 31^st 2002.

 

AS Adema kicked off and things were normal for a couple of minutes, until the referee made a decision that caused Stade Olympique de l’Emyrne’s coach Ratsimandresy Ratsarazaka to lose his temper with the referee. He was so incensed that he ordered his team to score own goals in protest, which they did do, 149 times. AS Adema didn’t touch the ball again in the whole game as Stade Olympique L’Emyrne, took complete control of the national league game, and reduced AS Adema’s players to the role of bemused onlookers.

 

 

The final score of 149-0 to AS Adema is a world-record more than quadrupling the previous record of 36-0 set in 1885. It is also possible that the referee lost count at some point, so the real number of own goals might have been over 150.