Football's Strangest Matches

Andrew Ward

I bought this book remaindered and naturally it turned out to be a bit of a dog. There are descriptions of some hundred or so so-called strange matches with each match getting two to three pages of write up. Oh, and the author cannot write.

True, some of the legendary football games are in here: the Christmas Day truce match from 1914, the match which is supposed to have sparked off a war in Central America (Andrew Ward admits, in fact, that football wasn't the cause) and from more recently, the "one team in Tallin" game between Scotland and Estonia, and the replayed FA Cup match between Arsenal and Sheffield United. Filling out the rest of the book are super fast hatricks, high-scoring games, games played in atrocious conditions and various other odds and sods.

But it's an odd selection. I'm sure I could list straight off a dozen stranger games than those selected by the author here. Heck, I reckon I've even played in some stranger games. As always in sport, it's all a matter of opinion.