Easter Island away, a drug lord in midfield, squirrel costumes, and 17 more bizarre stories from across the globe
In a new book, Paul Watson regales some of the planet’s weirdest footballing tales, including the club with a suspected drug lord in midfield, fans who dress up as squirrels and a Benin side itching for revenge.
Read on for 20 barely believable stories from all four corners of the globe…
Easter Island (A)
When watching the cup draw, any team is keen to avoid a potential banana skin, so Santiago Wanderers probably weren’t too thrilled when they pulled out a trip to the remote Juan Fernandez Islands in the 2024 Copa Chile. The fixture meant a journey to Robinson Crusoe Island, 400 miles off the Chilean coast and named after the famed Daniel Defoe novel, which tells the story of a shipwrecked English merchant stranded on a remote island for 28 years.
There weren’t enough commercial routes available for Santiago Wanderers to reach the island, so they had to call upon a Chilean navy supply ship, the Aquiles, to face unknown opposition.
Juan Fernandez’s team had been hastily assembled from recreational teams on the island, but were hampered by players missing training for lobster harvesting. They still made their professional opponents sweat though, only narrowly losing 2-1.
It was the second time a team from the country’s remote islands had entered the Copa Chile. In 2009, a team from Rapa Nui, more commonly known as Easter Island, hosted Colo-Colo, who are widely regarded as the nation’s most successful club. Colo-Colo returned home 4-0 winners, but the most memorable moment was Rapa Nui’s pre-match Polynesian war dance, on a field flanked by two of the island’s famous Moai statues.
Too bad to take part
When a club is kicked out of their league, you generally presume they’ve cheated to win, but for Sueca United it was the reverse – thrown out of the lower levels of Valencia’s league system for being so bad they were accused of not trying.
The club were the brainchild of eccentric actor Pau Codina and offered a chance to those who may not have got a game elsewhere. As admirable as that was, it left Sueca outmatched week after week. Over 11 seasons, they lost more than 300 games in a row, letting in more than 4,000 goals. The average scoreline throughout the club’s history was 24-0. Come September 2023, the Valencian Football Federation had lost patience and expelled Sueca United after just two games, including a 40-0molly-whopping. Enough!
A derby on a ferry?!
The Estonian islands of Saaremaa and Hiiumaa have always had a fierce but good-natured rivalry. When they decided to play a football match in 2013, neither side was willing to surrender their home advantage, so they came up with a novel approach to a neutral venue – the game was played aboard the M/S Muhumaa passenger ferry connecting the islands.
A grass lawn was laid down on the boat’s deck, but there was only room for five-a-side, which probably reduced the risk of any challenges going, erm, overboard if things heated up. Hiiumaa won 4-1 – a surprise, as Saaremaa is home to FC Kuressaare, who play in the Estonian top flight. Unusually, they train in Tallinn but host home games on their island, meaning home matches often require longer journeys than away trips.
Have boots, will travel
Sudanese side Al Hilal recently achieved an unprecedented feat – winning the league in three different countries, in the space of just two seasons. Displaced from their homeland by a brutal civil war, they and Sudanese rivals Al Merrikh joined Mauritania’s Super D1 League for 2024-25. The two countries aren’t exactly neighbours, situated around 3,000 miles apart, but Al Hilal duly finished top of the table, albeit only recognised as “honorary champions”, with locals FC Nouadhibou technically the title winners.
The two Sudanese clubs then briefly returned to their own country, with Al Hilal winning the Elite League – a short-form event to determine which clubs would represent the nation in continental competitions. Both then joined the Rwanda Premier League for 2025-26, where Al Hilal comfortably completed an unlikely treble.
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Oxygen required
There was endless talk about the effects of playing at altitude before England’s World Cup win in Mexico City this year, but that was trivial compared to a visit to Peruvian side Union Minas. From the 1980s to the early 2000s, the Cerro de Pasco side reached the summit of Peruvian football with their squad of jobbing veterans and nearly men, aided by substantial home advantage.
The Estadio Daniel Alcides Carrion is the highest stadium in the world at around 14,000 feet above sea level – that’s about 2,126 Dan Burns, and less than 4,000 feet lower than the base camps on Mount Everest. Opposition teams were so overwhelmed by the altitude that they would frequently be incapacitated, with oxygen masks a common sight in the visiting dressing room at half-time.
Union briefly led the top tier standings in the 1998 season, but the decline of the mining industry hit the area hard and they slid down the leagues before halting operations in 2011, only returning last year.
Six titles and a funeral
Some clubs evoke strong feelings of animosity from their rivals without it being entirely obvious why. For others, it’s more apparent. Take Maltese club Valletta FC, for example.
The Lilywhites are one of Malta’s most successful clubs – they’ve won 25 league titles and in 2000-01, they laughed in the face of Gerard Houllier’s Liverpool cup treble by winning an almost unheard of domestic sextuple, at once securing the Premier League, Rothmans Trophy, Super Five Cup, Lowenbrau Cup, Super Cup and the Centenary Cup.
But it’s the way Valletta celebrate their success that antagonises opponents – whenever they win the league, fans hold a mock funeral street parade for their beaten rivals, carrying coffins with the insignia of their rivals through the streets. It was no great surprise then that when Valletta suffered the first relegation of their history in 2023-24, a healthy dose of schadenfreude was expressed by other clubs.
Free trip to Tahiti
Since 1961, the Coupe de France has allowed entrants from French territories around the world, creating some of the most epic away days in world football. The French Football Federation covers the costs, but amateur teams still have to brave getting time off from their day jobs for what could be a lengthy jaunt.
In 2024-25, fourth-tier Normandy side US Avranches landed an away match with AS Dragon from Papeete in Tahiti – flying nearly 10,000 miles from rainy northern France to a tropical paradise island in the Pacific Ocean, only to lose on penalties after a 2-2 draw.
The wrong club
While players will always try to pretend that a transfer is motivated by a previous love for their new club, in reality there are often unspoken reasons behind switching teams. One of the strangest was the case of Congolese winger Thievy Bifouma’s move to Iranian side Esteghlal Khuzestan in 2024.
The former West Bromwich Albion loanee explained he put pen to paper because he wanted to face Cristiano Ronaldo in the Asian Champions League. “I reviewed the calendar and realised they had a game against Al Nassr – I said to myself this was where I wanted to go,” he told Iranian media.
The slight issue was that Al Nassr had a date with Esteghlal FC, based in Tehran, not Esteghlal Khuzestan, a completely different team situated hundreds of miles to the south. “I had no idea there were two teams named Esteghlal,” Bifouma admitted. “When I arrived, my countryman Gael Kakuta called me and asked where I was.” Kakuta played for Esteghlal FC – the pair quickly realised that they wouldn’t be team-mates after all.
“We got out of jail today, lads”
There are a fair few prison-based football teams around the world, but Welsh side HMP Prescoed are a rarity – their players aren’t made up of guards or support staff, they’re inmates at the Category D, or open, prison.
The team competes in the Gwent Central League, where a cursory glance at the league table suggests they appear to have an excellent home record, but abysmal away form. The reality is that HMP Prescoed aren’t allowed to travel to away matches, for obvious reasons – they play them on their own field but must forfeit every game 5-0 and take a three-point deduction. As a result, the best-case scenario for the season is to finish on zero points. Last season they ended on minus five, having bagged five wins and a draw from their 14 fixtures.
Amercian nightmare
When the small Caribbean island of Antigua was given a chance to enter a club in the United Soccer League, the third tier of US football, it seemed like a great opportunity. By the time of their ill-fated third campaign in 2013 though, Antigua Barracuda’s dream had turned into a nightmare.
The league was supposed to be ‘international’, but three teams from Puerto Rico were removed during the 2011 season, and by 2013 Barracuda were forced into relocation to the US mainland just to participate at all. The cash-strapped team lived in a cramped hotel in Tampa, Florida, making journeys of up to 10 hours in a tiny minibus to fulfil fixtures. At one point they even had to train in their hotel’s car park, as they didn’t have access to a pitch. They lost 26 games out of 26.
Okinawa’s number two team
Third-tier Japanese side FC Ryukyu come from the island of Okinawa, famed for its beaches, coral reefs and a well-known Second World War battle. Okinawa was once the Ryukyu Kingdom, a separate entity from Japan, and retains its own unique culture. It’s also geographically detached from the rest of Japan, which presents something of a challenge for a football team – every one of FC Ryukyu’s J3 League away games requires a journey of at least 400 miles.
However, if they wanted to encourage closer contact, they maybe wouldn’t have chosen Unko Museum as their 2025 back of shirt sponsor. The Unko Museum is dedicated to the theme of poo, claiming to be “disgustingly cute” and, worryingly, “highly interactive”.
Itching to get home
Many teams can empathise with the misery of getting back on the coach for a long journey home following a disappointing defeat. Few, however, can compete with Bani Ganse.
The Benin side were already in a bad mood when they filed onto their coach to make a 10-hour trip back home from Loto-Popo in the country’s south west. That mood was to get much worse when the players and coaching staff began itching uncontrollably. It turned out that Loto-Popo fans had sprayed an industrial itching powder on the seats of the bus in response to their belief that Bani Ganse had allegedly put “suspicious substances on the field”. Loto-Popo said they’d “neutralised that with holy water” – no such luck for the Bani Ganse players on their ever more irritating team bus.
The world’s oddest rivalry
When Baltika Kaliningrad were promoted to the Russian Premier League in 2023, no-one was happier than the supporters of SKA-Khabarovsk, who no longer had to make the gruelling trip across the country to face them.
Khabarovsk is in the far east of Russia, close to China, Japan and North Korea, while Kaliningrad is an exclave on the Baltic Sea, nestled in between Poland and Lithuania. The 9,000-mile round trip had been a regular, dreaded fixture, but Baltika’s promotion (they came straight back down, but yo-yoed back up again in 2025) at least trimmed Khabarovsk’s mileage a little; they rack up around 70,000 per season, the equivalent of going a third of the way to the Moon.
Andy Morrison: Seychelles boss?
When youth football coach Andrew Amers-Morrison went on holiday to the Seychelles in 2010, he could hardly have imagined how eventful his trip would be.
The Seychelles Football Federation mistakenly believed former Manchester City player Andy Morrison to be on the island and pounced on the opportunity to offer him the men’s national team job. Shocked but delighted, Amers-Morrison accepted. Sadly, it all unravelled when a journalist contacted the intended Andrew Morrison to ask him about his plans for the side, only for the confused man at the other end of the line to insist he’d never set foot in the Seychelles.
The embarrassed federation initially reduced Amers-Morrison’s contract to six months to give him a shot at proving himself, then withdrew the offer insisting they “could no longer be certain he was the right person to head the coaching staff of the national team”. Hard to argue with that – they’d literally given the job to the wrong person. The real Andy Morrison has since managed Connah’s Quay Nomads and Sri Lanka.
All at sea
Situated in the middle of the South Atlantic, the British Overseas Territory of St Helena is best known as the location of Napoleon’s final exile – it’s also home to one of the planet’s most remote football leagues, played on the island’s picturesque Francis Plain Playing Field.
It was in that league in 2020 that Crystal Rangers lost 36-0 and 30-0 to Rovers and Bellboys respectively – those seemed like bad results for a team who had won the island’s cup four times and league title once in the 1990s, but there were mitigating circumstances. Both times, the team were only able to field eight players, with an emergency rescue at sea meaning several had to run for lifeboats during the pre-game warm-up.
Out of Africa
Ceuta is an autonomous Spanish city on the North African coast, connected to Morocco, and made global news lately when thousands of migrants entered by sea in a matter of hours. It doesn’t have an airport, so it’s also become a real headache for visiting teams since Ceuta reached the Segunda Division in 2025.
The usual method is a ferry from the southern Spanish port of Algeciras, but when Barcelona drew Ceuta in the Copa del Rey in 2023, they left nothing to chance – flying their matchday squad there in three separate helicopters.
Last season saw Ceuta finish up respectably in mid-table, performing especially well at home, but coach Jose Juan Romero labelled their lengthy trip to FC Andorra for a dead rubber fixture “a pain in the ass” – a Spanish league match between a club from the African mainland and one from a different country altogether.
Going nuts
When you think about fan culture, you likely don’t immediately picture the landlocked principality of Andorra, yet the world’s 17th-smallest country is home to a brilliant, and slightly nutty, supporter tradition.
The town of Santa Coloma – just down the road from the country’s big smoke, capital city Andorra la Vella – is home to two rival clubs: FC Santa Coloma and UE Santa Coloma. The latter have embraced the town’s famously (OK, that may be overstating it a little bit) large squirrel population by adopting Esquirols, or the Squirrels, as their nickname.
To honour that moniker, supporters traditionally turn up to their final home game of every campaign dressed up as squirrels – something to strike terror into the hearts of their opponents, or, more likely, cause huge embarrassment for that one fan who forgets they still have another game remaining and dons the suit a fortnight early.
Easy day’s work
There’s an age-old punditry cliche that sometimes a result depends on which version of a team turns up. That was quite literally the case with Togo in 2010 – when Bahrain cruised past them 3-0in a friendly, the Asian team’s coach Josef Hickersberger was more suspicious than happy. Togo had played at the World Cup four years earlier, but there was no sign of Emmanuel Adebayor, and the players were struggling to even get through the 90 minutes.
When Bahraini officials phoned the Togolese Football Federation everything became clear – they hadn’t sent a team to play, and the side that had actually taken part in the game were imposters.
An investigation revealed the whole match was arranged by one of football’s most prolific match-fixers, Singaporean Wilson Raj Perumal, with the fake side led by former Togo boss Bana Tchanile. When the sham game was taking place, meanwhile, the real Togolese squad had been on a bus, having recently played 4,000 miles away in Botswana.
Taking the league by force
In South Korea, all able-bodied men must undertake a period of military service before the age of 30 – for a lucky few, that military service can come while playing football.
Gimcheon Sangmu is the team of the Republic of Korea Armed Forces, and every season they sign 15 players who will spend between 18 months and two years with the club. The team’s fortunes can vary, but they finished third in South Korea’s top flight in both 2024 and 2025, and would have qualified for the AFC Champions League had they not been prohibited from taking part in Asia’s continental competitions.
Their glory days will soon be over, however – the club will leave the top tier at the end of this year, regardless of their finishing position, because an affiliation agreement between the K League, the Korea Armed Forces Athletic Corps and Gimcheon City is about to expire. Any new citizen-owned club in Gimcheon or an armed forces club in a different city are expected to begin in the second tier.
“OK, I’ll pick the suspected drug lord”
Deportivo Capiata in Paraguay were at a low ebb in 2021 – even so, a new signing in their midfield looked oddly off the pace for a regular starter. That man was Sebastian Marset, accused of being one of the world’s most prolific cocaine traffickers, as well as a failed semi-professional footballer.
Marset arrived at the club in one of his many Lamborghinis, sending up a shower of gravel in the car park. He very quickly won over his team-mates with cash in exchange for supporting his claim to a place in the starting line-up – while the coach initially attempted to bench him, it was pointed out to him just how crucial Marset was.
Incredibly, Marset was able to play for the club, with his real name displayed on the team sheet, living his childhood dream of being a professional footballer while also allegedly laundering his money, until he chose to move on. US authorities placed a hefty bounty on his head and Marset was arrested in Bolivia in March 2026 – transferring to US custody, initially on loan with a view to a possible long-term deal.
Paul Watson’s book Around the World in 80 Clubs is available now
