They were the bizarre stories which, even years after they first played out, make you ask the question: did that really happen?
From the Chelsea goalkeeper refusing to leave the pitch and the craze for footballers ‘curing’ themselves with horse placenta to a World Cup ‘ghost goal’ that broke a nation’s hearts, The Athletic will recall some of the most bizarre stories in recent soccer history.
In the fifth of our 10-part series, Greg O’Keeffe revisits the Madagascan topflight fixture between AS Adema and Stade Olympique de l’Emyrne in 2002, and a scoreline — and scenario — that defied belief.
It sounds like a far-fetched sporting riddle. How did a professional football team go an entire game barely touching the ball and still win by a landslide?
And perhaps landslide doesn’t do it justice. In this quizzical scenario the team triumphed 149-0.
Except 21 years ago, under a tropical drizzle in the east of Madagascar, truth was far stranger than fiction — and the riddle was reality.
The first thing to know about that October night is that the players and coaching staff of reigning Malagasy champions Stade Olympique de l’Emyrne (SOE) arrived at the fixture against their bitter rivals AS Adema in a very bad mood.
It should have been the game in which they realised their dream of retaining the THB Champions League, Madagascar’s domestic top flight.
SOE had enjoyed a memorable season, surprising many by reaching the second stage of the African Champions League despite having to play both legs of their first-round tie away in Angola due to domestic unrest which sailed dangerously close to civil war in Madagascar. Coach Zaka Ratsarazaka and his players had arrived at the end of season four-team round robin play-off in the port town of Toamasina confident of progressing into a decisive meeting with Adema in their final fixture — a contest that would determine the destiny of the title.
Instead, in their penultimate game before colliding with Adema, they were controversially held to a draw by DSA Antananarivo. The holders were winning 2-1 with minutes left, until the referee awarded a contentious penalty that their opponents dispatched to snatch a draw.
The equaliser handed Adema the championship and, in the process, shattered SOE’s dream of successive league titles.
The fury triggered by that decision was still broiling the following week when SOE arrived to fulfil their fixture against Adema, who were 90 minutes from lifting the trophy in the presence of the team they had deposed.
Once the first whistle went, though, the champions elect would barely kick the ball again.
SOE quickly won possession and kickstarted a planned protest against the refereeing they felt had robbed them of their title. Over the subsequent 90 minutes, Ratsarazaka’s players proceeded to do something unthinkable.
They scored 149 rapid-fire own goals.
At a rate of one goal every 36 seconds, they angrily smashed the ball into their own net past a complicit goalkeeper, himself frozen by outrage. The whole occasion descended into a farce.
Adema would normally have hosted SOE at the Mahamasina municipal stadium in Antananarivo, but the round-robin play-offs were moved to Toamasina (Photo: Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Rado Rasoanaivo is a former captain of the Madagascar national team and now technical director of the Malagasy Football Federation. He remains friends with the SOE captain that day, Mamisoa Razafindrakoto, who succeeded him as Madagascar’s skipper. He remembers his sheer bewilderment when he heard the score.
Rasoanaivo would normally have been at the game but was working abroad that week, and phoned his friend as soon as he heard.
“Personally, I was very curious because it should have been a very hard-fought match,” he tells The Athletic. “They were clubs among the best in the country because many of the players who made up these teams were in the national team.
“Many questions were swirling around in my head. Then you quickly analyse the situation and the reasons. It was bizarre.”
During the game, which would gain entry to the Guinness Book of Records, the Adema players stood and watched in bemusement.
But when it became clear the official that evening was not going to abandon the game, some supporters became angry and gathered around the ticket office to demand their money back.
Razafindrakoto, seen here tackling Ivory Coast’s Keita Kader in a game against Madagascar in July 2001, captained SOE that day (Photo: Issouf Sanogo / AFP via Getty Images)
For SOE there would be quick consequences after their audacious stunt.
The coach Ratsarazaka was suspended for three years and banned from visiting stadiums for the same period. Razafindrakoto, along with team-mates Manitranirina Andrianiaina, Nicolas Rakotoarimanana and Dominique Rakotonandrasana, were suspended until the end of the season and banned from stadiums for the same period.
All the other players received a warning and a threat of more serious action should they commit further offences. It must not have helped their sense of injustice when the referee who let 90 minutes continue in such surreal fashion was not punished.
“Honestly, I don’t really know if he [Razafindrakoto] regrets it or he’s proud of it,” says Rasoanaivo, reflecting on how the infamous incident has carved a space in Malagasy football history. Articles about the score are among the first things that appear when you google SOE’s name all these years later but the players involved have rarely discussed it since.
“I only know that when I ask my friend the question, he is embarrassed,” says the 53-year-old who shone in midfield for Madagascar, nicknamed The Scorpions, and played professionally in Mauritius and Reunion before hanging up his boots and becoming a coach.
“Not for what his team was able to do at the time but because he had become the captain of the national team after me and he knows that you should not do these things as a competitor.
“They were young and there were situations that made them very angry back then. They did it without really thinking about the impacts.
“Of course, I imagine it was tough for them [in the aftermath].”
Rasoanaivo explains that there was a silver lining, of sorts, for the sanctioned players. “The bans ended sooner than expected because the players were essential for the national team,” he says. “They were recalled after two games without being selected.
“Was the punishment correct? I would say yes, in view of what they had done, because the players must respect the ethics of football no matter what. But, we must also understand that they were absolutely fed up.
“It’s the only way they found to show it.”
(Top photo: andriano_cz/iStock; burakpekakcan/iStock; peepo/iStock; Issouf Sanogo / AFP via Getty Images. Designed by Sean Reilly)
