A third-division provincial girls’ football team entered the annals of Belgian soccer on Saturday after suffering a crushing 50-1 defeat because of the absence of a single but crucial player: their music-loving goalkeeper.
SK Berlaar’s goal was left unguarded in a match with FC Malines after their goalie opted instead to go to a rock festival, Het Laatste Nieuws reported on Monday.
“Kick-off, move upfield and in it goes. That was repeated without a halt. At half-time, it was already 27 to 0,” the Flemish newspaper said, describing how 16-year-old Charlotte Jacobs tried in vain to defend the goal in the absence of the usual goalkeeper.
“We came back in the second half. We only took 23 goals and we even made one at the end. They let us score, that was nice,” the teenager said.
“If you subtract the time needed to get the ball from the net and bring it to centre field, we can say that the girls from Malines scored almost every minute,” she remarked.
“Luckily, there’s no return match,” team captain Julie Lemmens said more bitterly.
But SK Berlaar’s secretary, Jan Verbinnen, was unmoved by the loss and saw a way of inverting the outcome, noting that the other team had registered 16 instead of 15 players for the match.
“If I tell the [soccer] federation, they will have lost the match 5-0 and will be eliminated from the championships,” he told the newspaper. — AFP