Ridiculous scorelines put Estonian Cup on the map

A series of baffling scorelines reminiscent of Australia's halcyon days in the Oceania Football Confederation, have thrust the Estonian Cup into the football world's attention as minnows have lined up for a shot at the big boys and promptly been mercilessly thumped.

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Raudteetoolised players pose beneath the scoreboard after their big loss to Paide Linnameeskond. (Twitter/@Tedchampagne) Source: Twitter

Football cup competitions are supposed to be about the little guy getting an opportunity to match wits with the professionals. They bridge the gap between 'us' and 'them' and occasionally, throw up fairytale moments that become the stuff of legend when the paupers produce the unthinkable and knock out the prince. 

But not in Estonia.

A series of humiliating scorelines have thrust the Estonian Cup into the international limelight with lower league teams being dumped from the competition by results that put most international rugby union matches to shame.

On Wednesday, top-flight club Paide Linnameeskond smashed non-league JK Raudteetoolised (and yes, that's the club's registered name) 31-0. Celebrated Australia cricketer Shane Watson would struggle to score that many against Zimbabwe on a flat track. 

The most shocking thing about the score wasn't the name Raudteetoolised, which sounds like something you might find in the storage goods lane at Bunnings, or that it managed to keep Paide scoreless for the opening six miniutes of the match. No, it was that the scoreline wasn't the biggest thrashing in the opening round. 

That honour went to Tallina Infonet, which on the back of Trevor Elhi's 10 goal-haul, dumped Virtsu Jalgpalliklubi from the competition 36-0 two weeks ago. The 84 fans who turned up to watch that nailbiter witnessed a score that equalled Arbroath's 1885-1886 Scottish Cup win over Bon Accord - a world record for a professional domestic match until Madagascan outfit AS Adema outlasted SO l'Emyrne 149-0 in 2002 - but more on that later.

A special The World Game investigation - two minutes of calculator work - has uncovered the staggering disparity between non-Estonian league teams, like JK Rapla Lokomotiv, which lost 20-0 to second division FC Kuressaare and ranked sides like fifth division SK Taaksi, which enjoyed a relatively low-scoring 10-1 win over Ice Bears.

Our exclusive statistics reveal that the 30 matches of the opening round of cup competition have yielded a staggering eight goals per game on average, with more to come.

One can only fear for the future of the coach of top division Tartu JK Tammeka, named Indrek Koser, whose team bumbled its way to an embarrassing 4-0 win over FC Kose. 

With more action to come, fans can expect the goal feast to continue, although Estonia's finest have a way to go to match the goal-scoring feats of their Madagascan forebears.

In their 2002 match against AS Adema, the players of SO l'Emyrne were so incensed by the refereeing in some earlier Madagascan league matches that they kicked off and ushered the ball into their own net 149 times. 

In fact, the SO l'Emyrne players had to kick off and get the pill into their net 1.6 times a minute to achive the feat.


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3 min read
Published 1 July 2015 2:32pm
Updated 1 July 2015 2:50pm
By Tom Findlay
Source: SBS

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