Greatest Underdog Stories

During the Oceania Football Confederation’s (OFC) qualification rounds for the 2002 World Cup, the tiny Polynesian island nation American Samoa was to play a match against the mighty Australia in New South Wales. The result of the match was never in doubt considering American Samoa had never won a competitive match and Australia were the clear favourites from the Oceania ...

Chelsea 1-1 (4-3 on penalties) Bayern Munich (final, 2011/12) Heading in to the 2012 Champions League final, Bayern Munich were the overwhelming favourites. The Bavarian giants were playing at home and Chelsea had barely survived with enough first team regulars after a bruising semi-final win over Barcelona. But in the final the Blues kept doing what they did to eliminate ...

Wigan Athletic beat Manchester City (1-0), 2013 Heading into the final at Wembley, Wigan Athletic had already been relegated from the Premier League after flirting with demotion to the Championship in the seasons prior before their luck finally ran out. However, before they began life in the second tier of English football they had a chance to bid goodbye to ...

At the beginning of the 2016 European Championship no one gave Portugal any chance of making it to the last four let alone winning the championship. And the prospects of making it to the latter stages of the tournament hit a further low after their performances in the group stage. The Portuguese started their campaign against the minnows Iceland. It ...

In the aftermath of Iceland’s defeat of England in the round of 16 in the ongoing European Championship, Roy Hodgson has left his managerial role of the Three Lions. And not just that, the historic defeat is having far-reaching consequences as questions are being raised about whether this is the worst defeat of an English team in history? One cannot ...

Leicester City win the 2015/16 Premier League At a time when club football has seen the biggest talents being concentrated at the top European clubs, it has become increasingly difficult for the smaller teams to win major titles. In the prevailing circumstances what happened during the 2015/16 Premier League season is simply unbelievable. The Foxes desperately avoided relegation in the ...

N’Golo Kante’s story is a proper fairytale. The French footballer of the Malian decent is a typical example of a late bloomer. Early Years in France Five years prior to lifting the Premier League title, N’Golo Kante was playing for a small club in Paris suburbs in France’s eighth division. Kante was born and brought up in Paris’ 10th arrondissement, ...

  At the end of England’s European Championship group stage match against Wales on June 16, an interesting statistic did the rounds of Twitter and other social media: Jamie Vardy has scored four goals with his last five shots on target for England! Quite astounding. But then again, who would have thought that Vardy would be ending the 2015/16 Premier ...

  Latvia’s only appearance at a European Championship came in 2004; they haven’t qualified for the elite continental competition since. On the other hand, Germany are royalty and not just in European football but across the globe. So when the two teams clashed in a group stage encounter in Portugal in 2004 the result was widely expected to be a ...

  The 1990 World Cup opened with a shock result. Cameroon, whose only other World Cup appearance was at the 1982 edition in Spain, started their campaign against the then-reigning world champions – the Diego Maradona led Argentina, but they caused a huge surprise by edging out the South Americans 1-0 to get the tournament off to a surprise start. ...