The Battle of Montevideo – Sports Bizarre

2022-08-15

The 1967 Intercontinental Cup saw Scottish club Celtic and Argentinian side Racing Club face off across three brutal matches. In one match, the Celtic goalkeeper was knocked unconscious by a bottle thrown from the crowd before the game; despite this, the game still went ahead with a very nervous backup keeper. Reuters described another match as "a bar-room brawl with soccer skills abandoned for swinging fists, flying boots and blatant body checking". The series would result in the ‘Curse of El Cilindro’, when opp...

The 1967 Intercontinental Cup saw Scottish club Celtic and Argentinian side Racing Club face off across three brutal matches.

In one match, the Celtic goalkeeper was knocked unconscious by a bottle thrown from the crowd before the game; despite this, the game still went ahead with a very nervous backup keeper.

Reuters described another match as "a bar-room brawl with soccer skills abandoned for swinging fists, flying boots and blatant body checking".

The series would result in the ‘Curse of El Cilindro’, when opposition fans buried the bodies of seven black cats at Racing’s home ground, Estadio Juan Domingo Perón. Decades of bad luck followed, leading to even the Catholic Church getting involved in an attempt to end it.

Titus O’Reily and Mick Molloy look back at the ‘Battle of Montevideo’, one of the most hostile sporting encounters of all time.

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