Everybody loves when there’s a glut of goals during soccer – it makes it so exciting. It’s something all players enjoy except maybe for the defense team supporters. And over the years we’ve seen some pretty high-scoring end results.
However, none of these compare to the highest-scoring soccer match ever.
In fact, it puts pretty much all other soccer scores to shame. Now, are you sitting down, because this is sure to shock you. The highest ever scoring game was between AS Adema and l’Emyrne where AS Adema won a whopping 149 – 0 during October, 2002.
No other game in soccer history has even come relatively close to this crazy end result. But the story of how it happened is a very interesting one. Want to find out how it happened? Then keep reading!
The Story Of The Highest-Scoring Soccer Game
Okay, so obviously something has to happen for you to beat a team by one hundred and forty-nine goals. This doesn’t just happen from having an amazing attacking side or a poor defensive team. Especially not at this level of soccer.
And it didn’t happen that way.
What actually happened was that the L’Emyrne team scored all of the goals as own goals. But why would they do that? You ask. And it’s a good question. Why would you?
Well, at the point that the two teams played each other, AS Adema had already been crowned victorious as the overall winner of the championship cup. Regardless of how L’Emyrne played during this game, the score wouldn’t really affect the championship at this point.
The L’Emyrne team was already disgruntled about losing their previous match due to a penalty that they deemed unjust. And as current champions of the title, they were overall not happy about the loss.
And so they decided to do something unheard of that would leave people talking about the team for years to come. In protest, L’Emyrne decided they would do everything in their power to ensure that they lost the game.
And so as soon as kick-off began, they immediately started passing the ball into their own half and continued to relentlessly score own goals.
For the entirety of the game, the newly crowned champions just sat back and watched on as the opposing team continued to batter the ball into the back of their own net.
The Consequences Of Their Actions
Obviously, the soccer authorities couldn’t just stand by and allow this to happen.
It goes against the very nature of the game and let’s face it if every team were to just throw in the towel whenever they were losing, the game we all loved would soon become a farce and shambles. And so the authorities sprung into action.
The decision was that the L’Emyrne’s coach, along with four of the team’s players would now be banned from playing. The intention here was that it would dissuade any other teams, coaches, or players from pulling a similar stunt in the future.
It was the coach, Zaka Be, though, who received the harshest punishment. Not only was he suspended from coaching for the next three years, but he also would be banned from any soccer stadium during that time period.
The following players were also suspended and banned from stadiums but only until the end of the season:
Mamisoa Razafindrakoto
Manitranirina Andrianiaina
Nicolas Rakotoarimanana
Dominique Rakotonandrasana
Whether this ban had any effect on the players is undetermined but one thing is for sure, no other team has ever pulled a similar stunt since.
Highest Scoring Game In World Cup History
And the L’Emyrne VS AS Adema isn’t the only match to show an astronomical amount of goals. One of the highest-scoring matches that wasn’t all own goals, was during the World Cup. Australia beat American Samoa 31-0.
Again, this wasn’t just a case of one team being better than the other. I mean I suppose it was, but other circumstances made it that way.
So the tale of this story goes like this. Australia were already the favorites to win as they were clearly the stronger team. So American Samoa were already at a disadvantage. And then disaster struck.
A large percentage of the team were unable to travel for the match due to visa issues.
This meant that the already weaker team had no choice but to play the majority of their youth players. The average age of the players was just 18 – but there were even 3 fifteen-year-olds on the pitch.
Samoa’s manager even said that many of the players were yet to experience a full 90 minutes on the pitch. This match was their very first time.
So, though 31-0 might sound like a ludicrous score, the youngsters actually did a commendable job as things could have easily gone much worse for them given their abilities and lack of experience.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, there are some soccer matches that have seen an astronomical amount of goals. More than we are, realistically, ever likely to see again. It is certain that we’ll never witness a display of so many own goals ever again.
The soccer authorities saw to that with their off-putting punishments for the L’Emyrne game.
It is quite clear though, that there has to be extremely unique circumstances for such a large number of goals to be achieved and conceded during a game.
This type of display is very unlikely to happen under usual circumstances and I doubt it is something that you’ll see in most soccer matches.
In fact, it’s rare to see more than 3 or more goals from one team during a professional league soccer match. And even a number of 5 is seen as a huge loss typically.
But there you have it the highest-scoring soccer match with own goals is a whopping 149 while without is 31!
Soccer is the most popular sport played and watched in the world, yet it is one rarely talked about in the United States. Why is this?
Hi, my name is Adrian Turner and I am a self-proclaimed soccer head.
Since I was young, I have always been fascinated by soccer, and any of the games I could find on the TV channels. There weren’t many games broadcast, so thankfully I could find more on the internet as I grew up.
I turned all of my friends onto soccer and we’d play into the evenings after school.
