As Britain has absolutely no teams in this year’s Euro 2008 championships due to them all being rubbish, it could well be a bored summer for some people. However, Britain DOES have a team in a football competition taking place as we speak, its just not what you would expect…

The Vatican City (where the Pope lives for those of you who don’t know) has organised its own tournament, the Clericus Cup, but with a twist: all the competitors are priests. Out of 18 teams taking place, they claim 72 nations are represented, including our very own green and pleasant land. OK, so it might not be much of a replacement for Euro 2008, but what can you do?

What is quite novel is that they want to make the matches as clean as possible. This, in a nation state in the middle of Italy, which is traditionally associated with corruption and violence both on and off the field, may be quite hard to believe. They’ve even gone as far as to create a new card, the blue card, which effectively sin-bins the player for 5 minutes, maybe so they can ask forgiveness from God and atone for that high tackle.

By now, the tournament is almost finished, and unfortunately (but predictably) the Brits ended up going out in the quarter-finals (ahem) to a Crotian team (ahem). What is it about those pesky Eastern Europeans…

Things I like:
compost bins here

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