This Week in Weird Sports: Swamp Football
We guess calling it “Swamp Soccer” was just too alliterative and cool.
We guess calling it “Swamp Soccer” was just too alliterative and cool.
Originating in northern Europe, specifically Finland, swamp soccer got its start when bored cross country skiers decided to play a game of footy in some surrounding bogs. OK, first of all, why in the name of Baal are cross-country skiers “training” in goddamn marshes? We’re calling mild to serious shenanigans on the “official” swamp soccer website which supplied this origin story.
That said, the entirety of the information in this article is now based upon that website. Enjoy!
The rules are pretty similar to regular soccer. Teams of six play 24 minutes (two 12 minute halves) of kick-around. There are the usual penalty kicks and free kicks and ballet kicks and whatever other kinds of kicks soccer typically has. The only significant difference being there’s no offsides penalty—so cherry pick away!
Strangely, there doesn’t seem to be any definition of what a “swamp” actually is regarding the field of play. So feel free to play a pickup game of “swamp soccer” in any slightly wet patch of dirt you manage to come across.
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