Top Ten: Weird World Cup facts (Number 7)

Jonny Abrams
Posted on: 07 June 2010 - 14:03


What better way to warm up for the World Cup than joining Sport.co.uk in celebrating some of the competition’s most bizarre by-products from over the years? You can stop pensively picking your nose with your pen now, because there isn’t one. Unless you’re one of the players, in which case the best way to warm up for the World Cup would be, you know, warming up and that. So, without further ado - or indeed Freddy Adu - here is Sport.co.uk’s 7th weirdest World Cup fact for your delectation…


Roger Milla achieved international stardom at the age of 38 when his four goals – each of which he celebrated with the dance around the corner flag routine with which he became synonymous - helped an unfancied Cameroon side reach the quarter-final stage of the 1990 World Cup.

But did you know that, in 1992, he kidnapped 150 jungle pygmies in a bid to set up a charity football tournament which he claimed would raise money for their education and health within the African state?

Milla’s pygmy football tournament was held at the 50,000 all-seater Omnisports stadium but attracted only 50 punters, half of whom were ejected for hurling abuse at the pygmies.

Things were to get even worse for Milla - who is the oldest player ever to appear and score at a World Cup - a few weeks later when he was arrested after the police received complaints that he had imprisoned the pygmies in a single room underneath the stadium, watched over by an armed guard wearing a Saddam Hussein t-shirt.

The pygmies also claimed that they were given just one meal – of rice and sauce – in three days there.

A spokesman for Milla said: "You don't know the pygmies. They are extremely difficult to control. They play better if they don't eat too much.”


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