The world’s deadliest football match

…or the world’s most unbelieveable ending to a football match.

On 28th October 1998, it was reported by L’Avenir, a Kinshasha (of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa) newspaper that there was a football match in the country’s eastern province of Kasai between the home team Basanga and a visiting team.

During the match, with the score at 1-1, a bolt of lightning suddenly hit the ground, resulting in ALL 11 members of the visiting team dead!

Even more amazingly, not one member of the home team was hurt.

Still, the paper reported that 30 other people got burns.

It’s no wonder that the most popular local opinion is that somebody had put a powerful curse on the visiting team.

Unbelieveable? Well, it was a little difficult to verify the report since war was going on in that part of the country at the time of the match.

That incident capped a very strange few days for football (or soccer, as some prefer to call it). A few days earlier, during a South African premier league match in Johannesburg between the Jomo Cosmos and the Moroka Swallows, a bolt of lightning also struck the ground as the ball was being played near a penalty box.

At that time, one of them was leading 2-0.

Result:
(i) half the players from both teams fell to the ground;
(ii) several could be seen holding their eyes and ears;
(iii) the referee was so shocked that he blew his whistle non-stop;
(iv) two players had to be taken to hospital for shock and irregular heartbeats.

Luckily there were no fatalities.

As expected, after the initial shock died down, accusations started to be thrown that the losing team deliberately feigned injury in an attempt to get the match replayed.

Source
The BBC, 28th October 1998
The BBC, 26th October 1998

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