association football
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 Football player, players who almost exclusively use their feet to propel a Ball (association football), ball around a rectangular f ...
match played with on 31 October 2002 between two teams in
Toamasina
Toamasina (), meaning "like salt" or "salty", unofficially and in French language, French Tamatave or in the past as Port aux prunes, is the capital of the Atsinanana region on the east coast of Madagascar on the Indian Ocean. The city is the chief ...
,
Madagascar
Madagascar, officially the Republic of Madagascar, is an island country that includes the island of Madagascar and numerous smaller peripheral islands. Lying off the southeastern coast of Africa, it is the world's List of islands by area, f ...
. It holds the world record for the highest scoreline in any association football match, recognised by '' The Guinness Book of Records''.
SO l'Emyrne
Stade Olympique de l'Emyrne was a Malagasy sports club based in Antananarivo, Madagascar. They won the THB Champions League in 2001 and were runners-up in the Coupe de Madagascar in 2003.
SOE's 2002 results were forfeited after the team intentio ...
(SOE) intentionally lost the game against their archrivals AS Adema in a pre-planned protest over refereeing decisions that had gone against them during a previous four-team playoff tournament. Prior to this match, the previous highest scoreline was 36–0, in which Arbroath beat Bon Accord in the
Scottish Cup
The Scottish Football Association Challenge Cup,1885.
Overview
The match was part of a four-team round-robin play-off to determine the national championship. The league crown went to Adema after the reigning champions at the time, SO l'Emyrne, was held to a 3–3 draw by DSA Antananarivo in their penultimate match, during which the
referee
A referee is an official, in a variety of sports and competition, responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport, including sportsmanship decisions such as ejection. The official tasked with this job may be known by a variety of other title ...
awarded a late and disputed penalty to Antananarivo, resulting in a draw.
That draw meant that SOE was knocked out of the title race. With the championship already decided, SOE decided to protest; according to some sources, there was an argument between the SOE coach and the referee himself. SOE deliberately scored 149 own goals, with reports showing that after each kick-off, the ball was kicked into their own goal with the opposition players looking bemused. Some reports suggested that certain spectators approached ticket booths requesting refunds.
Following the match, the Malagasy Football Federation (FMF) suspended SOE coach Ratsimandresy Ratsarazaka for three years and four of the team's players, SOE captain Manitranirina Andrianiaina, goalkeeper Dominique Rakotonandrasana, Mamisoa Razafindrakoto (who was the captain of the Madagascar national football team) and Nicolas Rakotoarimanana, were suspended until the end of the season and banned from visiting stadiums in the same period. All other players from both teams received a warning and a threat of more serious action should they commit further offenses. The FMF nullified all of SOE's results from the 2002 season. The club later dissolved in 2006, though no direct link was officially cited.
The referee was not punished, as the situation was deemed to be out of his control, while Madagascar's sports ministry proceeded to dissolve the FMF, which was later reconstituted.
Dominique Rakotonandrasana died on 9 November 2023, aged 53.
See also
* Barbados 4–2 Grenada, where a Barbadian defender deliberately scored an own goal so his team could win by two goals in extra time according to an unconventional "golden goal" rule
* Thailand 3–2 Indonesia, where Mursyid Effendi deliberately scored an own goal to avoid his team facing hosts Vietnam in the semi-finals of the 1998 AFF Championship