The Idiot Project

[The Idiot Project]

Episode Four, Chapter Seven [10:04]

[The Idiot Project]

Episode Four, Chapter Eight [11:46]

[The Idiot Project]

Episode Four, Chapter Nine [11:46]

[The Idiot Project]

Christmas Special 2020 [15:55]

[The Idiot Project]

Episode Five, Chapter One [19:02]

Original Script
Winning. It’s why we’re here. It’s why we keep coming back, and boy is it easy to keep coming back if you’re winning. Life at the top of the KPB rankings gives you and your fellow nationals victory after victory after glorious, validating victory. The occasional defeat can be explained away - your goalkeeper’s ill, the pitch too wide, the opposition too rough - and before you know it you and your brethren are right back where they were. Winning.

Winning is what all these teams do. Cycle after cycle they win, and win and come back and win… right down to here, just outside the all-time top two-hundred, where that win percentage drops below fifty. These teams don’t quite get to win all the time, but still win more than they lose.  Two hundred places on, we’re already at the point where losing takes up most of a team’s time, and then… 

And then there’s the other 87%. 

These are the teams that, more often than not, were defeated. Beaten. Overcome. Routed. They are teams that failed. They capitulated. They floundered. They forced me to pick up a thesaurus rather than utter the dreaded ‘L’ word. 

They lost.

Yet even this episode of The Idiot Project, which is based around the theme of losers and losing, can’t bring itself to focus solely on these teams that saw more Ls than a Welsh scrabble set. We start the episode with a team that staunchly refused to lose. 

We start with Aguazul.

Aguazul’s run in the late fifties is something we’ve touched on before. They won four World Cups. Seven teams have won at least that many titles, sure, but largely not in the modern era, displayed here in dark blue. World Cups since cycle 47 have had an average of 166 entrants. Prior to cycle 47, a typical qualifying tournament had just 86. Winning so much in so short a period if a much harder thing to do these days, yet Aguazul did just that.

Within these six cycles is the unprecedented three-peat, a one-off accomplishment that, honestly, I don’t think we’ll ever see again. Although eleven different teams have won two titles back-to-back, aside from Bedistan and Valanora none of them ever looked like adding a third the next cycle. Looking only at the more competitive modern era, no team has even come close.

Let’s look closer at how, exactly, Aguazul achieved this feat. 

—-

Over the course of these three cycles, Aguazul suffered two losses. Two. From sixty-five games. And both of these games meant absolutely nothing. In this first loss it’s the final game of the qualifiers, they’re seventeen points clear at the top of the group and have no reason to give the game any respect whatsoever. The second loss is a dead-rubber against The Archregimancy in which we think Aguazul gave some game-time to some fringe players. This is denied by La Verdad which, given the newspaper’s general trustworthiness, all but confirms it. Either way, they were already through to the second round, and won the group regardless.

In researching Episode 4 we looked at this Aguazul run and we figured, yeah, this is almost definitely the greatest three-cycle run by any team in the history of the World Cup

Almost definitely. 

So close to ‘definitely’ that I’m almost certain I don’t need to crunch the numbers and find out for sure whether, statistically, this can be called the greatest three-cycle run of all time.

Okay fine. Here’s the Sosimo Lissón Metric.

The Sosimo Lissón Metric is named after the Aguazul super-striker that was part of each of the nation’s four World Cup wins, as a fringe player in cycle 54 and as a line-leading super striker in World Cups 57, 58 and 59,  scoring vital goals in the latter stages of each tournament. Definitive records of his goal scoring prowess are a little hard to come by, but over these 65 games we’re quite sure he scored over thirty goals. Nowhere near Val Kylx or Alan Belmore territory, sure, but on the plus side he’s nowhere near Val Kylx or Alan Belmore territory. 

Sosimo’s mark was left most prominently in the place where goalscoring records can’t be padded: Penalty shoot-outs. The Aguazul side of this era were a frighteningly hard team to beat, and even if you matched them for 120 minutes it was 100% certain that Sosimo and friends would better you in the shoot-out. We’ve named the chart after him because he is the embodiment of absolutely refusing to lose. That and - fittingly for this episode - his name begins with an ‘L’.

The Sosimo Lisson metric works like this. 
* We’re only interested in teams that played three cycles in a row at least once. Everyone else, we discard.

* For the teams remaining, we find their Games Played for every cycle and their Games Lost for every cycle.

* Then, we start to combine every batch of three World Cups. 

* We take each blue number - total matches - and divide it by each red number - total losses.

* We discard everything except the highest number, leaving one “golden” era and its Sosimo Lisson Metric. Our postulate is that the higher this number is, the better the team over that era. ‘Better’, as always, means ‘didn’t lose’. The database contains qualifiers, finals matches and any Official Friendlies which were posted onto the scores thread. There are no ‘divide by zero’ errors, so we know that no team has ever managed to go undefeated for three cycles. It’s important to mention at this point that games that went to penalty shoot-outs are listed as ties, regardless of whether a team won or lost the match. 

* In this graphic which we’ll use for knockout matches, we use green for wins and red for losses. The green field shows the team that progressed to the next round. If Sosimo Lisson hadn’t helped win this shoot-out, the number on the left would be red, and the one on the right green.



Only a fifth of all teams to have entered the World Cup are here.  To even get on this list you need to have played three cycles in a row, so our friends from the Chronicles of Ridiculousness are nowhere to be found, although their wheelhouse of cycles 30 to 32 is represented at the very bottom, with a commendably game but ultimately doomed Tocapa bringing up the rear.

Let’s look at the teams that went two in a row, starting with Az-cz. Their greatest ever era actually doesn’t actually include their World Cup winning cycle 38 in which the side lost eight times in twenty-four games. It instead runs from cycles 35 to 37. 67 games, nine losses. Take the first number, divide it by the second and you get seven point four recurring - their Sosimo Lisson score. Is this a good score? Well it’s good enough for 97th overall, which is decent, but perhaps a few dozen lower than where you’d expect a back-to-back champion to be. 

Most of the two-in-a-row champions are here, dotted around the top thirty, but interestingly Sosimo Lissón generally doesn’t consider their back-to-back eras to be their all-time best. Vilita’s greatest run isn’t in the current era, where they’ve won the World Cup three times, but instead the period in and around their first title. Audioslavia were at their strongest a few cycles after winning their only silverware, Sorthern Northland a few cycles before. Going further into the past, Brazillico’s double-era is well down the order largely through playing so few games over that time and Rejistania, who defined themselves by being difficult to beat and dominated cycles 12 to 18, are surprisingly low, their golden era coming during their more resolutely Karelan days in the early 20s.

So. Moment of truth time. Aguazul’s run between World Cups 57 and 59. Is it ‘almost definitely’ the greatest of all time? 

No.

...because it’s not even the greatest Aguazul run of all-time. They played 22 games in their one-loss Cycle 56 and only 19 in their one-loss cycle 59, so the former receives the higher score.

So, is this the greatest three-cycle run in history? Could it be possible that there is a team that is more impressive, statistically, than this Aguazul team?

Have a look at the top five. Who’s missing? Who’s conspicuous by their absence? Whose theme music is that?

Aguazul’s golden generation played 68 games and lost twice for a total of 34 points. Between cycles 53 and 55, Valanora lost only twice in 70 games. 35 points. They are side-by-side in the centre of this scattergraph, with the score on the Y axis and the cycle along the X. 

This Aguazul run, which I was absolutely sure was the greatest of all time, has fallen foul of the Untitled Elf Rule: In any metric, Valanora must be at - or near - the top.

And so… Erm… that’s the end of the video. I mean what, were you expecting an epic four minute synthwave montage? I’ve done one for Valanora before. There’s no reason to do another one here.

Here, for there to be an epic four minute synthwave montage, there’d have to be some kind of surprisingly dominant dark-horse, far far above every other team in history.

<Epic four-minute synthwave montage>

Notes/Trivia

• Working title: “The Sosimo Lissón Metric”
• The idea for this episode was born in Episode 4, Chapter 5, which included Kiryu-shi inflicting a rare loss on Aguazul in World Cup 61. I’d gone back and found out the last time Aguazul lost, and in the process discovered that they’d gone on a run of about 50 games with only one defeat.
• The idea for the Sosimo Lissón Metric came when I realised it was easier to count how many losses a team had suffered over X cycles than it would be to figure out what the longest lossless run ever was. Dividing games by losses makes for a more interestingly curved graph than, say, doing win-percentage over X cycles or something like that.
• I only really created the Sosimo Lissón Metric in order to do an epic 4-minute synthwave montage about Aguazul’s 57-59 side. When the data came back and put them behind Valanora, I groaned. And then I saw Schottia.
• Perturbator’s excellent album Dangerous Days has been used before on The Idiot Project. In Episode 1, Chapter 1, the Vilitan Zoom section is accompanied by the track Raw Power. The YouTube permissions for the album are pretty lax.
• The idea of using Humans Are Such Easy Prey over a montage of a team going on an epic run is… pretty much the *only* reason *any* of the above script was written. It just turned out I was doing it to Schottia rather than Aguazul.
• One of Valanora’s famous 40s sides would have had a Sosimo Lissón Metric score of about 50 (they missed a set of qualifiers due to hosting a tournament around then), but for the fact that the Idiot Project database includes any friendly matches that were posted in the official World Cup scores thread. They only lost one competitive match between cycles 40 and 42 (iirc). Their second loss was in a friendly. Either way, they’d still be comfortably behind Schottia.
  In any case, Schottia’s team in the late 70s is worth covering. We looked at them from the other side in the Bonesea episode (E2C2) and it was nice to have them as the good guys.
• On September 12th, the entire script for this video simply read ‘Aguazul Humans Are Such Easy Prey’. By September 14th it was exactly the same, only with Schottia instead of Aguazul, having done the research.
• The script was largely finished by September 29th. The video was largely done by mid October.
• Mriin’s take on this was that it was a really strong opening to the episode. Aside from some shakier moments (the Aguazul run is glossed over a little too quickly and the writing for this video isn’t the best) I’m inclined to agree. E5C1 is pretty slick.

[The Idiot Project]

Episode Five, Chapter Two [11:09]

Original Script
This is a nice graph. Let’s invert it.

The Inverted Sosimo Lisson Metric shows every team’s *worst* three-cycle era. We’ve divided it into three sections to account for a general theme: Most nations experience their worst run in the cycles immediately after their debut. We’ve put those teams in orange. This is the norm. Most teams are at their weakest in their debut cycles. Polar Islandstates, Baker Park, Anglatia and Bonesea were all pretty strong right off the bat, while Crosshill and Al-Quds are two early champions whose worst three cycles are also their *only* three cycles.

Next, the yellows. The worst run of these yellow teams wasn’t in their very first cycle, but instead immediately after a hiatus. Royal Kingdom of Quebec had entered World Cup 59 before becoming a regular fixture from cycle 62 onwards. All of these teams are the type to leave and come back again. In their worst era they are all starting a comeback of at least three cycles, with Recuecn at the top of this merry band, qualifying via the playoffs on their cycle 83 return after having entered only two other World Cups previously - Editions 72 and 73.

The teams in blue are the most interesting group. These are the sides whose weakest trio of cycles came in the *middle* of an extended run. They’d played a few consecutive cycles, established themselves at a certain level, and then somehow... got worse. 

The way multiversal football works… that’s kind of a strange thing to do. As a result, a lot of these *nations* are pretty strange. It’s like a who’s-who of meme-teams. Here’s the incomparable Lymantatia next to the timeless Lovisa, above dearly missed Maklohi Vai and The Weegies - and here’s the perennially unlucky San Regada sitting two spots above The Belmore Family

At the top: Mriin. But why?

In Mriin’s first three cycles, the Reavers lost only eleven games, mainly in qualifiers. From World Cups 83 to 85, they lost only nine, largely in the finals. The key is that they played 58 times in that first period, but only 45 in the second. Hosting the World Cup may adversely affect your Sosimo Lisson prospects if you lose and go out early.

Let’s sort these teams by value as opposed to type. Here’s Valanora. They’re first.  *FOUR HUNDRED AND FIRST*
<air horns, hitmarkers etc>

Seriously though. The Untitled Elf Game. I win a point.

At the very bottom, Tocapa have company in the form of Hemas, San Verdi and Olastor, who round out the list as the nations who had the losingest eras of all time. For most of these teams, their worst cycle is their first cycle. It stands to reason. But this chapter isn’t about them. 

When The Idiot Project covers the subject of *losing*, we’re not interested in teams that lost mere football matches. Losing, as a concept, as an artform, is much deeper and much more nuanced than that. Yes. I am gatekeeping defeat. 

You may call me a hipster, to which I offer the following riposte: It’s impossible to listen to seventies Japanese jazz while watching a video about the statistics of three thousand imaginary football teams *before it’s cool*.

Losing comes in six flavours. Vanilla, Logical, Romantic, Hyperesthetic, Hypoesthetic and Cheese.

Tocapa and the like are examples of vanilla losing. Bad teams doing bad football things and getting bad results. They lost, and they know they lost, and that’s fine.

Closely related to Vanilla Losing is Hypoesthetic Losing, which is a ten dollar way of saying a team lost, but didn’t feel anything when it happened. The teams from the chronicles of ridiculousness? Most of them lost football matches that they weren’t paying attention to anyway. Their national football team left the country and got schooled but their nation’s media never mentioned anything about it. The team came back and never told anyone they’d been an international footballer for five minutes. It’d be like trying to tell your friends that you were once an internationally recognised fridge magnet thrower. People don’t know what that is and telling them about your exploits is just going to make them confused and angry.

So far, so uncontroversial. Here’s the third type of loser. Hyperesthetic. 

What would be most painful, the feeling of being poked by a few dozen sewing needles or the feeling of being run through a broadsword? You can go and experiment. I’ll wait.

Did you go for option A? Honestly that’s what I’d have gone for as well. This is the method used by Tocapa, DJ8989 and the like. Lose often, shrug it off, continue your day. That’s not the case for Hyperesthetic losers.

For any international football team that demands nothing less than continued, perpetual, uninterrupted success. losses happen with a frequency of maybe once per year. It’s a defeat in a major final or the latter stages of an international football tournament and it *hurts*. It’s a missed opportunity. It represents a chance for your rivals to close or extend the gap between them and you. These teams may not feel defeat very often, but when they *do* feel it, it’s a pure, refined, intense pain that most people simply don’t experience. They’re not big losers, but when they lose, it’s big.

A close relative of Hyperesthetic Losing is Romantic flavour Losing. This is Hollywood Losing. It’s beloved Polarian Alexander Van Sorenson leaving everything on the field in straining to arrest his nation’s run of World Cup Final defeats, and failing. It’s The Babbage Islands getting closer and closer to the finish line but never quite making it. It’s a relative of Hyperesthetic losing but, really, it’s the opposite. Whereas Hyperesthetic Losers live in constant fear of the broadsword, for these teams, there is always the feeling that, for them, the end of the story is yet to happen. There’s always hope.

Cheese flavour losing is the type experienced by one-off puppet nations dipping a toe into international football. That just leaves us with one. Logical Losing. 

Is it the opposite of Romantic Losing? Yes and no. Yes, there is nothing romantic about Logical Losing but no, it’s not named as such in an attempt to position it as the opposite of Romantic Losing. 

Logical losing isn’t named after its attributes. Logical losing is named after a football team.

Extras
The Sosimo Lissón Chart
The Inverted Sosimo Lissón Chart (sorted by type)
The Inverted Sosimo Lissón Chart (sorted by score)

Please note: In the inverted chart, having a high score / longer bar is a *good* thing. It means your worst ever cycle is better than other teams’ worst ever cycle.

Notes/Trivia]

• Working title: “Everybody Takes a Beating Sometime”
• The original version of this script was done by around the 1st of October (see below), but was overhauled around October 30th
• Yes, there was a montageparody/airhorns/hitmarkers section in the middle of this video for the ‘Valanora aren’t in the top five give me my Untitled Elf Game points’ section, but it ended up looking fucking dreadful.
• This is probably the weakest video of the run. Its entire purpose is to get us from Aguazul to Eastfield Lodge while also getting us back on track with regards to the overall message of the episode. That message basically boils down to ‘losing is good. Own your losses’
  Update: This ended up not being the message of the episode. I couldn’t write it without sounding sanctimonious.
• The ‘before it’s cool’ line is the second best line of the episode. The best one comes in chapter 6.
  Update: That best line ended up getting cut
• The decision to use 70s/80s Japanese Jazz is related to two things. First: Episode 4 used a lot of Vaporwave, which often samples 70s and 80s Japanese City Pop. Secondly, a lot of these albums are deleted or just plain not available on Spotify, and therefore not monetized on YouTube, so I don’t get copyright struck when I use them.
• Indigo Jam Unit aren’t from the 70s, they’re fairly recent. Again, though, they aren’t on Spotify. That probably isn’t supposed to mean I can just use whatever of their songs I want, but hey. I use about four of their tracks over this episode. They’re great.
• The original version of this script was really sanctimonious and preachy and kind of depressing. I include it below in full.

Scrapped Script
These charts are pretty to look at, but we no longer have any use for the Sosimo Lisson Metric. This isn’t an episode about the greatest eras of these teams. This episode is about their losingest eras. For that, we’re going to need to invert our chart.

The Inverted Sosimo Lisson Metric shows every team’s *worst* three-cycle era. We’ve divided it into three sections to account for a general theme: Most nations experience their worst run in the cycles immediately after their debut. We’ve put those teams in orange. They make up the overwhelming majority of these teams. At the top, nations who did well in their debut and never took a backwards step. Polar Islandstates, Baker Park, Anglatia and Bonesea. Crosshill and Al-Quds are two early champions whose worst three cycles are also their *only* three cycles.

— script follows the finalized version until just after the Mriin bit —

Valanora being second on that graph isn’t enough for me to score a point in the Untitled Elf Game, but this reversed graph totally works. Taking all three colours together, Valanora are 401st overall, their opening three cycles worse than average for teams that stuck around for more than two editions of the World Cup. The only team above them on that first chart, Schottia, are a good 200 places below them on the second. Schottia’s unbeatable era came fewer than ten cycles after their ‘very damned beatable’ era, with twenty-five losses coming over the course of just forty-four games. At the very bottom, Tocapa’s three-cycle run may have been worse than everyone else’s best, but not everyone else’s worst. Here. Let me introduce you to Olastor.

What Olastor did better than most other teams isn’t simply to lose - there are plenty of single-serving nations who have done that more spectacularly - but to lose and come back again. Time and time again, as if losing was what they *wanted* out of football. In their greatest cycle, World Cup 82, they lost only four times in eighteen games - that’s less than half as many losses as their previous cycle and a third as many as the one prior to that. What did they do with this form? They tossed it in the bin. They refused to enter the next World Cup, coming back only for World Cup 85 where they lost seventeen of twenty-four games to finish dead last in Group 9, fifty-four whole points behind first and six points behind the heady heights of 12th.

Olastor’s win percentage in World Cup games, in total, is a little under 23%. When their fans go to see them play, there’s a 60% chance that they’ll see their country get beat. They’ve lost 110 times in 184 games. Every time they put their name down for a World Cup they’re probably going to lose ten more at least. And yet they keep coming back. Their fans keep coming back. And that deserves respect.

It isn’t easy following a losing team. I mean you all know someone who supports a big club. They’re a fan of AFC Treason or Spartangrad or C.A. Paulinthal despite the fact they live in Drawkland or Darmen. They live a couple of miles from their local team but they’ve never seen play, but then they’ve never seen *tHeIr* team play except on TV. Why do they do it? Why pretend you’re a fan of a big team in a different country? Why not support your local team, in sixteenth place in the second tier in your own country? It’s simple, and it’s the same reason why a losing team will get fewer and fewer fans for as long as they keep losing.

Teams that don’t win disgust us. With every time they try - and fail - they commit a cardinal sin: They remind us of ourselves. They, like us, are not superheroes. They get outthought and outbattled and outplayed. We want to believe they’re capable of beating the best, and maybe they are on occasion, but it’s also true that a group of hack clodhoppers representing a tinpot footballing backwater can figure out a couple of things that can confound those players you desperately wanted to be the next incarnations of Sosimo Lissón. Your F.A.’s social media team had built your star player up to be a sexier, left-footed version of Thorsten Kramer, but after ninety minutes of flailing you realise he’s… just a guy. A guy who can’t get the job done. A guy like you.

Fans of bad, lossy teams are a weird breed. They’re masochists or hipsters or people who need a helping of anger or indignation to get through their day or just people who continue to cling onto hope long after everyone else has let go. They love water-cooler football talk every Monday, but can’t understand it when, every few weeks or so, their work colleagues tune out from the conversation and get antsy when you ask them about football. Their team of multi-millionaire mercenaries lost at the weekend. Now they’re suddenly into baseball. Fans who follow a big team always disown them in the days after a loss, but then... we all do. And that’s why we should all be grateful for those multiversal football teams that, week after week, year on year, decade upon decade keep showing up, and losing, and losing, and *losing*, and keep coming back again and again. Those teams that lose every week have more resolve, bravery and determination than any top-ranked side. They are the lifeblood of international football more so than any top team you can name. They are true heroes.

There is a heroism in losing. And when it comes to losing, no team in the multiverse, throughout the rich history of the World Cup, is more heroic than this team. The greatest of the bad teams. My personal heroes.

Eastfield Lodge.

[The Idiot Project]

Episode Five, Chapter Three [14:57]

Original Script
Eastfield Lodge are ten games World Cup 57 qualifiers and Eastfield Lodge, as usual, are languishing in mid table and going absolutely nowhere. There are six games left. They are eight points shy of the playoffs.

If a fightback is going to happen, it has to start now.

The Eastfielders move up to third, but they’re closer to second last than second place. Tretskivucia remain eight clear with five games left to play. Both teams have still to face Aguazul, who are thoroughly Aguazulling the group, and both teams have to face each other right now. It’s must win for Eastfield Lodge.

Awesome. Let’s see what Eastfield Lodge have to say about it….

...

Okay they’re probably happy but they’re not paying attention any more because that’s… that’s a lot of bodies.  This is EFL’s last roleplay of the thread so the team are going to be flying blind from here on out but that’s okay. This comeback is still possible. Tretskivucia have a bye-day, so a win for Eastfield Lodge is sure to close the gap, but they’ll need to keep winning, and they need Tretskivucia to drop further points.

Three points clear with one game left to play. Eastfield Lodge have to travel to Aguazul. Aguazul are unbeaten. Aguazul have scored eighteen goals in their last three games. Aguazul will go on to win this World Cup and the two after that. This is an impossible task… right?

Right. EFL have played their last game. They must now wait on Matchday 18. Tretskivucia have to get a point in their final game, but that game... is against Aguazul. Aguazul are unbeaten. Aguazul have scored twenty-one goals in their last four games. This should be an impossible task.

Should. We’ve already seen that it’s not.

In Chapter 1 we said this match meant nothing, but that was only true for Aguazul, not for Tretskivucia, and not for the Eastfielder population slumped on the couch, watching the TV with increasing disbelief. 

Aguazul were supposed to win. Aguazul always win. How could this happen? And when it comes to Eastfield Lodge, how could this happen over and over again?

Eastfield Lodge joined the football world in cycle 49, carrying with them arguably the worst flag in the history of the multiverse. They entered the same Baptism of Fire tournament that gave us Andrewboy, Osarius and an Oberour Ar Moro side that would beat the Eastfielders in the knockouts. The note at the top of this post probably didn’t seem quite so sarcastic back in 2009. Eastfield Lodge have generally not enjoyed further success in World Cup qualifying.

The yellow line here shows the Eastfielders’s goal difference throughout a qualifying campaign, including any friendly matches deemed ‘official’ by the World Cup Committee, but omitting playoffs or finals appearances. 

We’ve chosen goal-difference because it gives us a base: This faint black line with positive goal differential above it and negative below. 

Yellow zigzag above good, yellow zigzag below bad.

Here, we can see the Eastfielders’s slow start to the World Cup 57 qualifying campaign, with their goal differential in the negative. It drops further after their mid-qualifying exhibition game against Bears Armed, and rises again with a comprehensive friendly-match victory over Cyborg Holland. We see their late-campaign fightback as they charged back up the table, including their other destruction of Cyborg Holland - this one in the qualifiers - followed by defeat to Aguazul and three post-qualifying friendly matches. Two losses and a draw against Eura, Tamarindia and The Weegies. 

Eastfield Lodge were one of those weird teams that wore blue on the Inverted Sosimo Lissón Chart. They’re in a modest position just outside the top two-hundred. Their worst trio of cycles apparently 73 to 75. 

Cool let’s have a look at those cycles.

Okay. Not great but not terrible.

World Cup 73 qualifying, you don’t need me to tell you that’s a mid-table performance. Fourth in a group of seven, finishing with a goal difference of minus one. They may as well have not been there at all. 

World Cup 75 is almost exactly the same story, but about World Cup 74? This doesn’t seem so bad so far…

Qualifying group 19, four matchdays to go, here’s the situation in this alternative version of the table. Looking at the group four years on, it doesn’t seem particularly strong save for top-seeds Cosumar in the playoff spot. The auto-qualification spot belongs to Eastfield Lodge. 

They have a game in hand, they have seven wins from eight games. They’re flying.

Defeat away to Cosumar is nothing to be ashamed about. Five points ahead of Szavoda with only three games to play, all they need is four points from their three remaining fixtures in order to progress, and the first of them is a six-pointer against Szavoda. Victory here would put them into the playoffs at least. A draw would do just fine.

Okay. Not ideal. Two ahead with two to play, but the first of those two games is against Vaugania, who haven’t moved from zero points the entire campaign. 3-0. One game to go, two points the gap, and unlike the Tretskivucia situation, Eastfield Lodge’s fate is in their hands. A win here would seal that playoff spot. A draw would be fine as long as Szavoda don’t win. 

---

Eastfield Lodge are a master of the dark art of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. 

I mean look at this. This has to be a successful qualification run, right? I mean if it isn’t then this has to be one weird qualifying tournament…

World Cup 54 qualifying. The format: 17 groups of six… plus 13 groups of 5. Double round robin - so 10 games or 8 depending on your group. Top two progress to a secondary single round robin with ten groups of six, where the top three qualify for the World Cup. 

Not a typical qualifying format. It was a doomed one-off experiment and the only upside was that it provided Eastfield Lodge with the opportunity to fail in a new and exciting way.


The side strolled into first place in their group in stage one, went onto stage two, won their first two games, and just had to get through their final three matches without dropping too many points. A couple of draws or a single win should be enough here, and they’ve got three matches to do it in. You ready? 

One. 
Two. 
Three.

We’ve seen Eastfield Lodge capitulate spectacularly from a position of power.  We’ve seen them fight back into contention and get slapped back down by Margaret. Is this how Eastfield Lodge live their life? A succession of glorious, romantic failures at the final hurdle?

If only their existence was so exciting. Throughout their eleven-year history, spectacular failures are few and far between. Eastfield Lodge lead a purgatorial existence. We may associate them with losing, but losing accounts for only 30% of what they do. They’re not a football team that loses. I mean, life would be simpler if they were. There’s a stark, palpable certainty in a string of 4-0 defeats. Teams that finish bottom of the group know their place in the world. The Eastfielders’ meagre diet consists of 6-3-5 records and fourth place finishes, and it has been so since their inception.

Eastfield Lodge are not losers like DJ8989, losing meaninglessly,  to the utter indifference of the entire country.
They are not losers like The Babbage Islands, capitulating heartachingly on the grandest scale.
Eastfield Lodge are losers in the worst possible sense. They trudge endlessly through a grey fog, seeing nothing, touching nothing, signifying nothing. A paradox. Bewilderingly inconsistent, but crushingly, thuddingly predictable.  

They are connoisseurs of capitulation. They practice losing in its grandest and its most terrible form. 

But surely that can’t be all there is? Somewhere in that long history their fans must have had something - anything - to cheer about...

Notes/Trivia

• Working Title: “The Eastfield Logic”
• The script was largely finished by mid October. The video was mostly finished by early November.
• The first twenty seconds are among my favourite opening 20 seconds of all TIP videos. Entirely for the song.
• This EFL bit is very clearly influenced by Jon Bois’s series on the Seattle Mariners, which you should definitely watch. That runs to about 3 and a half hours. The Eastfield Lodge section here ends up at only 40 minutes.
• The final scene is pretty much stolen from the fourth video of that series. The bit that introduces Ichiro Suzuki.
• I have a list of about half a dozen NS Sporters who have told me they’d like to narrate a video and who I haven’t asked yet. I was going to choose one of them for this one, but after Nethers knocked E5C1 out of the park I was having trouble reading the script in anything but his voice, so eventually I asked him to do it.
• I had a chat with Nethers about his pronunciation of ‘bewilderingly’ and he decided he wanted that to be the IC pronunciation of the word according to Nethertopians. I like this.
• Whatever the previous record for 'amount of individual images used in a TIP video', this video broke it. By a lot.

[The Idiot Project]

Episode Five, Chapter Four [15:42]

Original Script
They say a sign of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. You can’t levy that accusation at Eastfield Lodge. After the side capitulated so rottenly in the qualifiers for World Cup 54, they approached the next cycle with a very different look.

The Whoverse’s infiltration of Eastfield Lodge’s National Football Team may have been temporary, but it had a lasting effect in the form of one man. The Doctor. Clubless, ageless, nameless, with thighs far too skinny to be a professional footballer, The Doctor nevertheless became a fixture in the Eastfielder national team from cycle fifty-five to cycle eighty-three.

The Doctor’s impact was immediate.

Qualifying Group 14. Three games to go. Top two progress to the World Cup. Eastfield Lodge have never been to a World Cup. They are fourth. The teams above them - Rejistania, Unibot and The Holy Empire - have eight World Cups between them at time of writing. Nevertheless EFL are only three points back. This is do-able.

An away win over Invisible Wabbits keeps them in contention, but their nineteenth match will come against The Holy Empire, for whom a draw will be enough to qualify for the finals. Eastfield Lodge, though, need the win. Unibot and Rejistania both have home ties coming up against unfashionable opposition. They won’t both lose. EFL need to keep up the pace. Only a win will do.

0-0. The Holy Empire qualify. Let’s see how much ground EFL have lost to Rejistania and Unibot.

Huh. 

For once in their life, Margaret has done them a solid, but surely this is too little too late. Unibot will round out qualifying against Blasphematic Fools, Eastfield Lodge travel to Emagna needing not only a win, but for Unibot to lose or draw.

This is the point in qualifying where they capitulated last cycle, and where they will be cruelly denied by Aguazul,  Tretskivucia and Margaret in cycle 57. 

For once, fate is kind to the Eastfielders, and for the first time in history, Eastfield Lodge are going to the World. Cup. It’s their first ever ticket to the big dance. They don’t even need to get through to the knockout stages for this World Cup to be considered a success. Just three or four points and an increase in rank would do. They’re not playing to win the World Cup, they’re playing to position themselves for future World Cups. A few points would go a long way towards that.

They get zero.

Man. That boost to their KPBs would have been really useful too. For all The Doctor’s talents in manipulating space-time, for the next twenty cycles he will not be able to move Eastfield Lodge one inch.

<scroll through cycles 56-73>

The Eastfielders make some gains in the early seventies, but it’s not much. They’re ranked 81st in the world for cycle 70, and by the end of their supposed ‘worst ever era’ they’ve improved to 68th. Over this period they go from 11.21 KPB points to… 10.78. 

There’s a depressing logic to it. Eastfield Lodge are not a team that makes progress. They do not move. Everyone else shifts around them. 

So… we know what their worst ever run is. Cycles 73 to 75. What’s their best three-cycle run? Over their eleven years as a permanent fixture of the football world, what would be considered the golden generation of Eastfielder football? 

It’s the three cycles immediately after their worst generation.

This performance in World Cup 76 may not look particularly impressive but remember, Sosimo Lisson only cares about not losing, and EFL aren’t those kind of losers. It’s not winning often enough that bedevils them. Here, they lose only twice on the way to third place. 

By the time World Cup 77 gets underway, it has been 22 cycles since Eastfield Lodge played in the World Cup.

Notes/Trivia

• Originally, Logic II and Logic III were just one video, but it ran to 25 minutes. In cutting it in half I got to slow the pace a little, so we end up with a 15 minute video and a 13 minute one.
• The script was largely finished by late October, and the videos done by early November.

[The Idiot Project]

Episode Five, Chapter Five [12:47]

Original Script
The Eastfielders suffer just one defeat in twelve to top the group with six matchdays to go. You might think this is a weak group. It’s not. It’s really not.

The lead at the top is a slim one. If two of Brenecia, Anglatia or Turori get a run together and the Eastfielders don’t continue their fine form then they could very easily miss out on the World Cup again.  Eastfield’s final six games of qualifying will include matches against all three of these teams. At home to Brenecia on matchday fourteen, away to Turori on matchday fifteen, and a final-day showdown with Anglatia. Three six-pointers. All of which are not so much ‘must win’, but must not lose

The Eastfielders hold their nerve. They just about keep their heads above water, while all around them are losing theirs.

With two games to go, Brenecia are out after a horrendous run. The Brenecians and the Anglatians have different ideas of how to most accurately express their feelings.

Eastfield Lodge can’t quite finish the job against Mattijana, and Turori are allowed right back into the picture.

On the final matchday, Turori play a Kaisaru side who have lost fourteen of their seventeen games so far. Eastfield Lodge need to match Turori’s result to progress. If Turori draw, they need to draw. If Turori win, they need to win, and they need to do it against group leaders Anglatia, who themselves aren’t guaranteed qualification.

--

At last. A second World Cup. Last time out they lost all three games. In World Cup 77, they will improve. In the most minor way possible.

World Cup 78 largely passes Eastfield Lodge by as they struggle to fourth place in the group, and that’s the golden generation of Eastfielder football. Mediocre, surprisingly-good-and-then-mediocre, and mediocre. The Eastfieldiest of Eastfielder teams. 

Eastfield Lodge will never reach these heights again. Their best run since came in World Cup 81. They finished fourth in qualifying.  Since then, things have taken a definite turn for the worst.

This side, that represented Eastfield Lodge in cycles 76 to 78, goes down as Eastfield’s golden era. You may laugh. And if you’re laughing, then you’re missing the point entirely.


Over the course of eleven long years and almost forty World Cups, the universe has given Eastfield Lodge every possible sign that they should quit. Year upon year, cycle after cycle, they do not improve. They start each cycle where they began the last one, and the one before that. Average. Unremarkable. The very definition of an also-ran. 

Their weakness, though, is also their strength. It can be summed up in the mantra ‘If at first you don’t succeed, redefine success’. There are so many teams who exist like this. An accomplishment that may be taken for granted by your team - like qualification for a World Cup - gives fans of these teams more happiness than you could imagine. A winning team wins and feels relief. Their fans don’t feel joy, not truly, just that a score is settled, or a deal is done. A losing team wins and instead feels… happy. Truly, purely happy. A meeting of joyful surprise and the genuinely unexpected.

Losing, in any flavour, is something Eastfield Lodge have become immune to. Not the act - heaven knows they’ve become accustomed to that over the years - but the taste. Though they do not make progress, they do not exist without purpose. They exist for the same reason every football team exists. Entertainment, and the pride of seeing the colours of your home town, or home land, represented on a wider stage.

Anyone balking at the idea that Eastfield Lodge have a ‘golden generation’ is wrong to do so. And they’re wrong in more ways than one.

<CR win montage>

Notes/Trivia

• Small plot-hole: The Inverse Sosimo Lissón metric lists WCs 73-75 as Eastfield Lodge’s worst ever run when it’s plainly obvious from the yellow squiggles that cycles 84-86 were worse. The reason is this: The Sosimo Lisson data was processed before World Cup 86 ended. Cycles 84-86 are the Eastfielders’ worst. This was addressed in the script to Chapter 6, but that addendum ended up on the chopping room floor.
• Logic II and III are the first and last times I try using a game controller to scroll Google Earth. For Chapter 6 onwards I finally sat down and figured out Google Earth’s ‘paths’ function.
• Raven Cullen, who emma (age 5 and three quarters) is asking to die, was sacked by Brenecia, naturally, but immediately found work as manager of Anglatia. (Courtesy of Nephara)

[The Idiot Project]

Episode Five, Chapter Six [21:13]

I tried to write 20 minutes of material on Eastfield Lodge and ended up with more than double that and still, we didn’t even scratch the surface of what exactly an Eastfield Lodge *is*.

Take this guy for instance. The Doctor. Over three videos and forty-two minutes we barely learned a thing about him. Truly doing justice to his impact on Eastfield Lodge and the wider football world would take at least forty minutes more. He’d deserve every second, but still, there’s only so much time at my disposal.

The Doctor was famously clubless, but I will tell you about a special club that he does belong to. The Doctor is a member of the CL Club: A club I just made up. It has very specific entry requirements: To be part of the CL Club you must be a footballer that has lost at least 100 games of World Cup football, throughout the qualifiers and the finals. C for Century, L for Losers. To do this, you need to be part of a World Cup squad during a match they lost, whether or not you made it onto the field that day. If it seems unfair that you should take an L for sitting on the bench, then it shouldn’t. If a third-choice goalkeeper gets to put a winners’ medal on his mantlepiece after watching his side win the World Cup, then they also get to have a loss on their record whenever they watch their side get beat. You can’t have it both ways. A team that wins together, loses together.

It’s a little difficult to collate definitive statistics on this type of losing. Data about appearances isn’t so readily available. From the data we do have, and from a wee bit of guesswork, we estimate that The CL Club has 22 members.

As you might expect, a couple of these members are elven players who have joined the CL Club through longevity rather than incompetence. You’ve probably heard of them.

Valanora talisman Laborious Hawk has amassed an estimated 119 defeats between World Cups 34 and the present, and may add a few more before finally hanging up his boots. He’s the only Vanorian elf here, with the likes of Espy va Drake and Faeron Soldarian having retired a few defeats short of the mark.

Valrauncion may never have got anywhere near the one hundred mark himself had he not opportunistically switched allegiance from Starblaydia to Krytenia after World Cup 57 amid Starblaydia’s temporary withdrawal from international football. He managed 125 losses between winning World Cup 44 in his debut cycle and walking out on Krytenia during a failed attempt at qualifying for World Cup 82.

The numbers you see here are these players’ ages as listed in that cycle’s roster. Valrauncion’s switch from Starblaydia to Krytenia is shown via this change of colour, just before his 2,850th birthday, and the gaps are the years Krytenia declined to enter the World Cup. Naturally, The Doctor’s age is an error message. Any entries with missing rosters are filled if we can safely assume the player would have played that cycle.

Just below the elves is a player you definitely haven’t heard of. Not least because his name has been chopped off here. Miroslaw Szymkowiak, a player who attained 104 losses between cycles sixteen and forty. Miroslaw Szymkowiak played international football for Lovisa.

In fact, every player else on this list is Lovisan

We said previously that Eastfield Lodge were a team that didn’t make progress. They stayed perfectly still, and other teams shifted around them. In terms of being stationary, they can’t hold a candle to Lovisa. For the ages of these players we’ve used a scale from light yellow to deeper orange. As a player ages, the colour in their square should get darker as their age gets higher.

It.. noticeably does not do that. Lovisan footballers, for whatever reason, almost always stay the same age from tournament to tournament.

Let’s take this guy for example. Georg Lunz. The man whose name adorns the back of the kit Lovisa used for much of their tenure.

Lovisa debuted in World Cup 12. Using Forum Time, World Cup 12 took place in 2004. Lunz was right there. Young, wide-eyed and fresh-faced and ready to make his mark on the footballing world.

Four years and almost 30 cycles on, Georg Lunz was *still* playing international football for Lovisa in largely an unchanged squad. Every single player’s age had not changed except for midfielder Valdek Kulig, who had started World Cup 12 as a 30 year-old yet had lost four years at some point between World Cups 19 and 20.

Lunz survived Lovisa’s one and only squad shake-up, in Cycle 41, and it’s only at this point where his age was altered - from 22 to 24. He maintained a place in the squad right up until the side bowed out of competitive football after World Cup 49.

The World Cup 86 comeback, eleven years on, listed the same players.

Assuming Lunz experiences years at the same speed as the rest of us, we can assume he ages one year every 365 days that he experiences. As such a conservative estimate suggests that 1,095 days have passed for him between his first appearance as a 22 year-old and his most recent appearance as a 24 year-old. Lovisa have played 561 games in that time. As such, we can work out that Georg Lunz plays a game of international football, on average, once every 1.95 days.

Bear in mind, that is just *international* football. He shouldn’t have had any time at all for the club game, but his club career hasn’t been quiet at all.

In World Cup 12, Lunz was listed as playing for FC Leve, who would sell him to Giant Zucchini’s Bearnaise F.C where reports from May and June 2004 say he won the golden boot two seasons in a row. A return to Lovisa and club side Lovos-Renault Atma would follow, succeeded by a move to the adorably named Visby Nestle Quarcoo before joining Cafundeuese side América in 2008. There he’d stay for five documented seasons, winning the Empress Cup along the way. A transfer to Sao Jorge would come in 2009.

Lovisa have lost 183 games of international football throughout its history, and so Georg Lunz has lost 183 football matches throughout his international career. He is the captain of The CL Club. The Losing Man’s Loser.

The fact that so many Lovisans are on this list doesn’t necessarily mean Lovisa are losers. At odds with the theme of this episode, Lovisa are not a side that is generally associated with losing. Quite the opposite. We instead associate Lovisa with their catchphrase:

“Lovisa Win”

This isn’t a very apt catchphrase for Lovisa for two reasons.
One: Of all the teams to have played over five hundred World Cup games, they’re one of the few to have a win percentage below 50.
Two: Lovisa have never created a roleplay that contained only the phrase ‘Lovisa win’.

Trust me. I checked.

<Lovisa RPs>

So none of these match reports contain *only* the words ‘Lovisa Win’. The phrase only appears twice. Once as a fairly innocuous headline, once accompanied by a paradoxical ‘..but lose’, alongside a request that the hosts ‘change their minds’ about Lovisa not qualifying. It may sound strange but, at that moment, this was actually a reasonable request.

In the final game of the World Cup 15 Qualifiers Lovisa recorded a 2-0 win over mid-tens also-rans Shang-ti. Despite the victory, results elsewhere meant Lovisa finished fourth in the group, one place outside the qualifying spots.

Lovisa failed to qualify. Or so they thought.

Hosts Eauz and The Eagles Nest had been using these tiebreakers. After points put Kingsford top of the group, goal difference put The Belmore Family second. Head-to-head points couldn’t separate Cockbill Street or Lovisa, so head-to-head away goals were used, putting Cockbill Street through.

Back in those days, tie-breakers weren’t something that changed from tournament to tournament at the discretion of the hosts. Each of the previous fourteen World Cups had used Goals For as the third tiebreaker. Back in the days before style modifiers, this wasn’t problematic.

As the hosts hadn’t specified these tiebreakers in their bid thread, WCC President Kaze Progressa stepped in, requesting that the hosts stick to the established tiebreakers. Cockbill Street lose out. Lovisa win. And WCC regulations regarding tiebreakers were drafted shortly after.

At the finals, Lovisa and Aquilla were drawn together in Group F which, naturally, very much made that group the easiest in World Cup 15. Why, only a bunch of absolute morons wouldn’t be able to make it out of *that* group.

Lovisa would go on to reach the quarter-finals, losing to eventual champions Commerce Heights. It was Lovisa’s greatest performance in a World Cup up to that point, but they didn’t mention anything about it.

There’s a reason for this apparent indifference, which you may have already spotted.

The fact that Lovisa’s media output is pretty light is often used as a stick to beat them with. As if it’s a sign that Lovisans don’t care. I don’t think that’s true at all. Indifference doesn’t manifest itself in signing up for the World Cup 35 times. Indifference doesn’t take you to an expensive internet cafe in a foreign country to spend 5 cents a minute trying to touch-type on a largely alien keyboard in a second or third language. Indifference doesn’t have that kind of pull. You know what does have that kind of pull?

Winning. It’s why we’re here. It’s why we keep coming back, and boy is it easy to keep coming back if you’re winning.

It’s not quite so easy to keep coming back if you’re losing. And that’s why teams like Eastfield Lodge and Lovisa deserve to be commended on their longevity. They’re not here for glory, or for records, or just to annoy this guy. These teams are here out of love.

That *love* is the reason they keep coming back is a *good* thing. Love is not a weakness. Love… love is not a loss....

• Worst closing line ever.
• Uploaded on December 31st 2020. Originally had a second half that incorporated The Torch, but I'll save that for another time.

[The Idiot Project]

Chapter 1: Scorigami
And why it's a stupid way to start a series

A Scorigami is a result that has never happened before at that level in that sport. 1-1s and 2-1s have happened countless thousands of times throughout football history, but higher scorelines like 7-3 or 8-1 happen much less frequently. When two teams play a match that results in a unique scoreline, or at least the first scoreline of its kind, both teams have attained a Scorigami.

Whereas in sports like rugby and gridiron the pursuit of scorigami is a worthwhile endeavour - the scoring system means certain scores happen very rarely, such as those where both sides get low scores or results containing numbers not easily attained by adding 3s and 7s together - Soccer and Scorigami aren’t naturally suited to one another. One goal is worth one goal. The only interesting data to be had is in absurdly high-scoring matches. If you ever want to start a football video series with an eighty minute episode on some aspect of sports data, only someone with absolutely no idea what they were doing would choose scorigami.

So let’s keep this section short and sweet.

World Cup Scorigami - Cycles 1-86

UICA Scorigami - Cycles 1-73

The UICA engine is not made for scorigami.

As we’ll see in the rest of this series, UICA football is a different beast than NSWC football. How many six-goal blowouts happened in World Cup qualifying last cycle? 10? 30? More? When was the last time you saw a 6-0 or 7-1 in UICA or IFCF football? It’s not like it doesn’t or can’t happen, or that the scorinator is markedly different, it’s just the nature of the competitions. In the World Cup, a decent team has between 4 and 12 straight up gimmie matchups every cycle, rolling over some tinpot ragtag bunch of bare-footed island folk on the way to the real party. A good team competing in the UICA Champions League aren’t going to have to go through that same qualifying rigamarole. More often than not they get put straight into the group stages to play three of the best clubs world football has to offer.

Of all the teams to have played over 50 matches of UICA football, only a handful have a win percentage of more than fifty, and the majority of those are from associations that are, er, associated with the earlier days of UICA football.

Teams: 50+ UICA games    SOC           Percentage
Ranca Toco               CAF           59.95%
Dunboor FC               CAF           57.96%
Arrigo Portuguese        CAM           56.03%
Porto Lacruz             CAF           55.45%
Caires City              CAM           55.41%
Kitsilano Konquerors     COM           55.41%
Fryi Frêndê              FFD           55.36%
Cafundó do Juta          CAF           55.02%
AFF                      CAF           54.97%
County Stanley           LLF           54.51%
Handon United            SCT           54.43%
Black Oasis Athletic     COM           54.23%
SC Rinaldi               VAL           53.75%
CF Mont-Pluie            LLF           53.50%
Vezhidrupa               PZJ           53.45%
San Solari FC            COM           53.27%
Port Sebastian           SCT           53.19%
El din Marbles           CAM           53.03%
Albrecht FC              CAM           52.63%
Clube Comercial          CAF           52.60%
Clube Imperial           CAF           52.59%
Qidade Savana            JSY           52.49%
Petardos S/A             CAF           52.36%
Eldorado                 CAF           52.24%
Namiri Forest            ZWZ           52.00%
Kapundae FC              HAN           52.00%
Olympic Nassau Bay       NGD           51.72%
Ajax Khaldoon            QPM           51.67%
Tihon                    CMT           51.52%
Dûsanto Mojaikĭjĭ        JSY           51.43%
Sporting Esper           ZWZ           51.32%
Somer City and Surrounds ETM           51.16%
FC Fairleigh-Warburton   ETM           51.11%
Albrecht Turkish         CAM           51.01%
Ephesian FC              ZWZ           50.98%
Argos LP                 COM           50.93%
Soldarian FC             VAL           50.89%
Heidelstadt Falken       JSY           50.85%
Garitzeta Racing Club    ITB           50.60%
Nestingham FC            FAC           50.48%
Alianza FC               SJG           50.30%
Extramarine              MIU           50.00%
Liria Prizren            MYT           50.00%
Football Nordiqueville   SPT           50.00%
Exton FC                 APX           50.00%
Energia-Yaderny Miago    MYT           50.00%

Selected others
1830 Cathair             AUD           48.59%
Yuba United              COM           48.23%
Raynor City United       VAL           46.88%
Directus                 EUR           41.16%
AFC Treason              NPH           40.96%

Compare and contrast to the World Cup, where around two-hundred teams - a little under ten percent - have win ratios higher than .500. If you’ve entered twenty World Cups and have a win percentage of 45%, you’re probably Eastfield Lodge. If you’re playing UICA football every season and you have a win percentage of about 45, you might be one of the greatest teams of all time.

So Scorigami-wise, the UICA tournaments are more conservative than the World Cup. I spy something pretty interesting though. In seventy three cycles, two scores only happened once. A 6-6 and an 8-4. Cool. Let’s have a look at these games.

Ordinarily, this would mean I have to do some tiresome formula jiggery-pokery to find all the games which have a combined 12 goals and then wait for the document to figure out how to ctrl+f through eighty-five thousand results. At least, that’d be the case if this was The Idiot Project database. The UICA database was put together by someone who knew what they were doing. Looking up both matches is a synch because of this beautiful thing here.

This is ‘The Code’. Commerce Heights assigned every single official UICA game an official code. It works like this.

The first symbol is either C, G, S, X or !. Champions Cup, Globe Cup, SBCC, Supercup or a special one-off match.
The second symbol is the cycle, from 01 to 73.
The third symbol denotes the round. A-E are for preliminary rounds - the further through the qualifiers you go, the further through the alphabet you go. The key for the group stage is G, then it’s K and J for the second and third rounds, Q for the quarters, S for the semis and Z for the finals. In the Supercup, this is always X.
The fourth part is a number denoting which tie the match is. The seventh match of the first preliminary stage would therefore be A07. At the end, an A is for the first leg of an encounter and a B is for the second leg.
In group stage matches, this digit-digit-letter format is replaced by a letter-digit-digit. The letter is the group and the number is from 01 to 12 for which match it is.

So let’s look at these games.

Cycle 40, Globe Cup Playoff Round
(Liventia) Orean United 8-4 Seersha County (Ancharmunn)

In the thirty-seventh Globe Cup (UICA cycle 40. The Globe Cup started appearing in UICA cycle 4), the second leg of the Playoff Round match between Ancharmunn’s Seersha County and an Orean United team that hadn’t made an appearance in UICA football for eight cycles finished as a drab, scoreless 0-0 draw. As a result, Orean went through on aggregate 8-4.

Both sides had, evidently, played every single card they had in the first leg.

Orean’s all-time win-percentage of 36.25% is a modest one. The side were never quite the team in either Liventian domestic football or the LAPFL Federation - the combined domestic league of Adi’han and Liventia - commonly qualifying for the Globe Cup via their talent for winning domestic cup competitions while also slumping to 13th in the league.

Orean went into the match as second favourites.

Believe it or not, Seersha were the favourites.

Charmunnry clodhoppers Seersha County were, at the time, two-time National Premier League champions and had won the nation’s Challenge Cup competition the two seasons prior. A first foray into Globe Cup football had ended quickly against Cosumarites Kaldukosk, but Charmunnry football had come on leaps and bounds in that time and, despite their opposition having much more history in the competition, it was expected that Seersha would sneak it.

They did not sneak it. In fact in terms of sneakiness it was like they’d turned up in an empty field on a fluorescent orange Ducatti blaring jungle music in the midday sun while wearing a shirt saying ‘I am here’. They were, indeed, there. And then they weren’t.

Seersha County would stick around for a while, eventually joining the Tynealan league with Aelsh and Charmunnry clubs. Their greatest achievement in UICA football would come during this time. After being bundled out of the Champions Cup by RGS Athletic, they’d put a run together in the Globe Cup that would culminate in a 5-2 aggregate victory over Vanorians FC Capri. Deafeat in the second knockout round to Haitiëns would follow, and aside from one more group-stage Globe Cup exit that was it for Seersha in the UICA era.

Cycle 11, Champions Cup Preliminary Round
(Krytenia) Emberton Reds 6-6 Bradley Hornets (West Zirconia)

Most famous for being the answer to the odd-one-out round in a list including themselves and Royal Emberton, Krytenia Emberton, Patriots Emberton and Patriots Everton, Emberton Reds (formerly Everton City Reds. Ask your dad) are the poor half of a Krytenian derby, which takes the word ‘poor’ to its logical extreme. The side have played their football in the Overleague, Liga Calania, O-League, COCANEFA LigAnaia, COCANEFA Liga Calania and, eventually, the reformed O-League once again, and as such have floated aimlessly through more leagues than a bored octopus.

Involved in UICA football from cycle two, Emberton Reds are one of inter-associational football’s longest running members. Cycle 11 was their second bite of the cherry, having won the Overleague ahead of whatever their city rivals were calling themselves that week (I checked, it was ‘Krytenia Emberton’). They’d be put into the Champions Cup for all of two games, losing to Yaroslavl Axe Bears of Myedvedeya, before defeating Lecland’s Leyton FC over two legs to set up the tie with Bradley Hornets.

Bradley Hornets were no strangers to UICA football, having entered almost every season, never finishing below fifth (or above second) in West Zirconia’s Division One over those first eleven cycles. The side had made the group stage of the Globe Cup on a few occasions, making it to the knockouts once before being dispatched quickly by Cafundeuese opposition. They came into the game with Emberton Reds as favourites and duly took a 2-0 lead to Emberton, where they intended to get an away goal to all but seal the tie.

They ended up with six. An equal share of the twelve goals scored throughout the game.

Naturally, the Hornets progressed. Naturally, the group stage would be their ceiling.

Both sides found a measure of success later on. The Hornets would win the Globe Cup in cycle 36 and would add a Campeonato Rushmori to their respectable trophy cabinet. Emberton Reds would lose the final of the Globe Cup in cycle 30 and watch from the couch three days later as their rivals, calling themselves ‘Royal Emberton’ that day, stormed to victory in the Champions Cup and the Supercup.

Emberton Reds still exist today. They are as relevant as any team in the O-League.

[The Idiot Project]

The Unofficial Heavyweight Championship
The Original Belt
Not All Who Wander Are Gone

The UWCC (Unofficial World Championship Committee. It basically amounts to Jeremy Jaffacake wearing a hat) has been busy. Not content with confusing international football with talk of holy bloodlines and rumours of Al-Qurija being somehow the Last Scion, the UWCC has introduced a new unofficial title belt, this time for club football.

It is called, simply:

The title belt works largely the same way as the international version, with two important differences.

Firstly, while the UWC accounts for Extra Time and Penalties, the UHC does not. Only the score after ninety minutes is taken into account. Secondly, the rules on what to do in case of a disappearing belt are different. Whereas a new Interim UWC belt is created (and given to the World Cup winner) if no belts are active for a cycle, Interim UHC belts are created (and given to the winner of the Supercup) if no belts are active for three cycles in a row.

The first thing you’ll notice is that, while only three UWC ever appeared in international football between 2003 and 2019 (now four, with the disappearance of Free Republics), five different versions of the Heavyweight championship were required in the 2009-2019 UICA era, despite the three-cycle rule.

The colours of the five belts have been taken from the stripes of the IFCF logo, although red has been replaced by black for the second belt to make it a little more readable.

You’ll notice the first belt, in deep UICA purple, didn’t last very long at all.

Bedistani/Capitalizt greats Yuba United were given the inaugural Heavyweight championship after winning the first ever UICA Champions Cup, back then dubbed the Taqilquip Champions Cup.

Yuba United held the title twice over that initial period, from cycle 2 to cycle 6. Septentrionia’s CS Ourseville 1093 were the holders by the time the Cycle 6 Supercup started.

Were it not for the Supercup, we’d probably only have about two belts. The Supercup is a vortex which can, if the SBCC champion manages to defeat either the Globe Cup or Champions Cup winner, take the UHC out of the hands of a top team and leave it languishing in the lower reaches of a league system until that side either gets back into the SBCC or goes the whole hog and makes it into the Globe Cup again.

In cycle six, Ourseville 1093’s surprise defeat to SBCC winner Aliança, of the Cafundeuese second tier, took the first title out of circulation for four seasons. The UHC’s three-cycle rule meant that the Season 9 Supercup winner was given the first Interim Unofficial Heavyweight Championship. Gallingly for defeated former champs CS Ourseville 1093, it would be their city rivals Union d’Ourseville who would be given this new championship.

Aliança would find themselves back in the SBCC for season ten, going into the first preliminary round.

In the first leg, they retained their title with a 1-0 win at home. In the second, they were defeated by two goals to one. Aliança progressed on away goals, but at the cost of their Heavyweight belt, which they surrendered to their opponents.

It was their opponents’ first ever tie in inter-associational football. They had never been in a UICA tournament before.

They would never be in a UICA tournament again.

And why would they want to? They only needed to play two games before they became - rightly and provably and apparently permanently - the greatest team in the world.

Van Tienhoven. Zonenveld. Jonker. Van Voorhees. Ter Haar. Household names one and all. Heavyweight champions now for over a decade.

Ladies and gentlemen:

The Reigning Unofficial Heavyweight Champions

Argon Wanderers
Nethertopia

Nethertopia
06-02-2009, 14:44

The NeFA has selected the following clubs for the international copetitions:

TQCC:
1. Tenderville United
2. NAPPC
3. FC DePardenti
4. SVV Stoedt

Globe Cup:
1. Ratos Island Seaside
2. Ashdom City

SBCC:
1. Lake Rushmore
2. Argon Wanderers
3. Mignon United
4. September City


And hereby anounces the Nethertopian WendelCorp Divisions 1 and 2, the new Nethertopian professional competitions, which will be launched soon.

Argon Wanderers: Van Tienhoven ~ Thijs, De Ruine, Zonenveld, Claus ~ Jonker, De Witt, Van Voorhees, Ouke ~ Ter Haar, Reijers
Full name: Argon Wanderers
Manager: Wilbur de Goeij
Stadium: Trottinghole (cap. 15,000)
The Club: Oh, hey, look what we have got here. A club with not a single Golden Sovereign to spend, with a bad team, an incapable manager and a stadium that’s way too old to be used for anything but space to create houses. We can be short about this club: They don’t belong on the top notch level of international football. If they stay up it would be a miracle. But miracles do happen in football. We will see.

We must apologise for Argon Wanderers.. they are idiots..They were purposely trained wrong. As a joke.

I got in touch with a certain Stefano Stroopwaffel to ask for some information on this team, whose stadium Trottinghole sounds like two things you’d find on a farm and whose first eleven are probably farmers themselves. Stroopwaffel, the world’s foremost authority on Nethertopian football, has this to say about the mighty Argon Wanderers:

“Hang on, I actually managed to find them on a map”

That was it. Very little is known about the club, other than the fact that, as of recently, you can find this plaque outside their stadium.

Early on in the life of the international version of the Unofficial Championship, the reigning champions absconded with the original title and the first interim belt would be removed forever by cycle nine. With the club version we are, thus far, technically doing much better.

[The Idiot Project]

The Unofficial Heavyweight Championship
The Second Belt
From the Fringes to the Center

Union d’Ourseville lose the title at the start of cycle ten but win it back again near the end of cycle twelve, defending it unsuccessfully in the Champions Cup final against Albrecht FC of Candelaria And Marquez. The Black belt, like the original title, is duly lost in the Supercup as Albrecht are upset by a team named Terabits CE from Virçais. Terabits will make the Globe Cup, but not until five cycles later, and so a new belt is given to season fifteen Supercup winners CS Lac-Amédée of Septentrionia. More on that title later.

Terabits return to action in the Globe Cup in cycle seventeen, winning their two preliminary qualifiers but losing the belt in the group stage to Sorthern Northland’s Lispole Strand. It ends up with a team named Surgeons from Estresse Intenso (not to be confused with the team Plastical Surgeons, from the same nation. We think) who lend the title to San Diego Iguanas for a single leg of their knockout tie before losing it to SC Rinaldi, and it’s the Vanorians that take the title away, lending the belt to Septentrionia’s Football Nordiqueville in the first leg of their Globe Cup quarter-final, taking it back in the second leg, but being ousted from the tournament in the process.

They keep the belt for 36 cycles while around the darker reaches of Vanorian football.

By the time the title returns for cycle 53, we’ve had two unifications elsewhere - on both occasions unifying the fifth title with the fourth one - and the third title has been taken away. The fourth belt is removed from circulation at the end of cycle 54, leaving the black title the only Unofficial Heavyweight Championship in existence.

It turns out we never need another one. The black title traverses from the SBCC to the Supercup where Ulsa are waiting to gobble up a brave Ursona FC of Valanora, before Nithgard GU of Earent take the title.

It’s from here that the title is defended in an official UICA Ceremonial match for the first - and only - time, as Nithgard take on Franz Josef City a match commemorating UICA’s Diamond Jubilee. Franz Josef get the win at the Olympic Tower stadium in Aeropag, and bring the belt with them to the next Champions Cup.

Over the next 20 cycles, the Unofficial Heavyweight Championship will be defended every single season bar one - season 71, with FC Capri winning it during a Globe Cup Quarter-Final defeat and bringing it back for cycle 72, losing it in the preliminary stages to Kotaraja Pahlawan FC of Pauh Janggi.

UICA closed its doors at the end of the seventy-third season of its reign, before disappearing into the nether-realms. In doing so, it took with it one of the greatest teams of all time, and the final holders of the black belt.

The Other Reigning Unofficial Heavyweight Champions

Sonoma Center Panthers
Commerce Heights

The history of Sonoma Center Panthers dates back to the very first league table published in the multiverse’s very first Domestic Soccer Newswires thread in late 2003. Like the various Emberton clubs, they weren’t always known by their current moniker.

Bedistan Football League 2015 (published November 3rd 2003)                    
                         W  D  L GF GA  GD Pts
Graceville Salamanders  20  8 10 65 46 +19 68
---------------------------------------------
Dennis Bears            19 10  9 75 43 +32 67
Hampton Paladins        18 13  7 65 44 +21 67
Brooklyn FC             19  8 11 64 51 +13 65
Washington Tigers       18 10 10 66 49 +17 64
Yuba United             20  4 14 60 55  +5 64
Amissville Antagonists  17  9 12 65 56  +9 60
Mifflinburg FC          17  9 12 46 44  +2 60
High Mountain Buffalo   16  8 14 69 63  +6 56
Ilium Dragons           13 13 12 49 45  +4 52
Columbia Sharks         13 13 12 60 57  +3 52
Hundon FC               14  8 16 56 63  -7 50
Pine Village FC         15  5 18 57 66  -9 50
Sonoma City Volcanoes   12 11 15 57 63  -6 47
Jamaica Giants          12 10 16 50 56  -6 46
Griffin Zebras          12  8 18 46 60 -14 44
---------------------------------------------
St. Lawrence FC         11 10 17 54 53  +1 43
Eastfield Rogues        10  8 20 40 68 -28 38
San Diego Iguanas        6 10 22 38 70 -32 28
Hillcrest Hawks          6  9 23 39 69 -30 27

The Volcanoes became the Panthers in short order and they, alongside Jamaica Giants, Griffin Zebras, Yuba United and others, would eventually fall under the control of Commerce Heights, building greatly on their modest beginnings.

To get a feel for how important Sonoma Center Panthers in the UICA era, you just have to look at their stats. In terms of seasons entered and appearances in UICA football, SCP have the third most ever with 696 appearances over 70 seasons - only Raynor City United and Yuba United have more, but SCP edge out those two giants on win percentage and goals per game. With two Globe Cups and two Champions Cups to their name, they can lay claim to being a first-ballot hall-of-fame team of the UICA era.

Take a snapshot of the UICA rankings at any particular point over the last decade, the Panthers were likely in the top thirty. After UICA season 1 they were the 6th best team in the world, after season 73 they were second.

With the role that Bedistan and Commerce Heights played in the early days of domestic football, it’s perhaps fitting that one of the teams that formed the through-line from 2003 to 2019 gets to take the title off into the sunset with them. And of course, there’s always the possibility that one day, they might return...

The Unofficial Heavyweight Championship
The Third Belt
Take it Aweigh

All seemed fine with the third Unofficial Heavyweight Championship. From CS Lac-Amédée’s awarding of the belt after winning cycle fifteen’s Supercup up to cycle 30, with Jasiyun’s Heidelstadt Falken taking it from the Globe Cup’s group stage in cycle 20 only to pop up in the Champions Cup in cycle 22 and drop the title immediately to Taylor’s Cross of West Zirconia.

It’s fate, predictably, is the same as that of the first and second titles. Dullham Town of Liventia managed to upset Champions Cup winners Cafundó do Juta in the Supercup, and took the belt into the nether-reaches of the Series B Champions Cup. They’d enter the SBCC in cycle 30 and lose it to Pasarga’s SC Troubalose, and the belt would take a journey through Yuckyucks FC and Bradwell Saints before being won by the team who would take it out of circulation for good.

The Other Other Reigning Unofficial Heavyweight Champions

Tioka & Weybridge
Sorthern Northland

In T&W’s only ever season in Sorthern Northland’s Division One, they won 7 of their 38 games and finished second to last, getting relegated back down to the second tier and eventually making their way to the third division, where they’d stay.

It was during that brief cup of coffee at the height of Snorthern football that they enjoyed their only season of UICA football, as representatives of the since-vitrified nation in cycle thirty’s Series B Champions Cup. There, they’d put a decent run together, defeating Starblaydia’s Jhanna FC 3-0 twice, winning their group and making their way to the semi-finals after taking the UHC from Krytenia’s Bradwell saints in the quarters. They’d lose and regain the title against Union of Zarbli during an aggregate defeat, and that would be the last anyone ever heard of Tioka & Weybridge.

Until now, of course.

[The Idiot Project]

The Unofficial Heavyweight Championship
The Fourth and Fifth Belts
Quaternary Champions of the World: Unite!

In a refreshing change from the norm, the gold belt’s disappearance after five cycles is nothing to do with the Supercup. It is, instead, everything to do with the 90-minute rule.

Cycle 33 Supercup winners Qidade Savana of Commerce Heights are immediately defeated by Telecontarë, Starblaydia’s elven eleven, who go on a nine-game tear with the title during which time they win just three games and draw the rest. Good form for an Unofficial Heavyweight Champion, not so good for a team in the Champions Cup. After two one-all draws with Mytanija’s Decraa United Tele are ousted in extra time. They return the next cycle, again to the Champions Cup, and manage to keep the belt with them as they drop down to the Globe Cup via an away goals defeat to Pazhujeb’s FKM. They surrender the title in the group stages to Pulmonologists, win it back from SK Franz Josef City, drop it to Mercia Bromham in the knockouts, win it back in the second leg, drop it to Neurologists, win it back in the second leg, and eventually lose it to Osarius’s Burningham City.

By the time of the Globe Cup final, Commerce Heights’s Medoria Löwen are the holders, and while they hold Mar Sara to a draw to keep their UHC title, they’re defeated in extra time, and Medoria Löwen would not qualify for UICA football for the next five seasons.

Cue the fifth title, and Cycle 38’s Supercup winners East Franz Athletic. They begin season 39 as champions, Yuba United end the cycle with the belt and defend it comfortably in cycle 39’s Supercup, bringing the belt with them to cycle 40’s Champions Cup, for which Medoria Löwen have qualified. A unification is on. Both sides lose the belt early, but the titles escape the group stage, traverse the first knockout round, and meet in the Quarter FInals of season 40’s Champions Cup.

(Osarius) Grasshoppers Turic 2-1 Jamaica Giants (Commerce Heights]
Unofficial Heavyweight Championship Unification Bout - Champions Cup 40 Quarter Final, First Leg

Members of the inaugural Bedistani Football League back in 2003, Jamaica Giants never quite reached the heights of rivals Sonoma Center Panthers or Yuba United, taking part in ‘only’ thirty UICA seasons. In terms of games played in UICA football, they’re not alongside the old giants of UICA football, but rather some more familiar faces.

Most appearances - UICA Cycles 1-73
Rank  Team                NAT Nationality            Pld              
55	Mercia Bromham      KRY Krytenia               258
56	County Stanley      LLF LAPFL Federation       255
57	Iskara Daii         STB Starblaydia            250
58	1830 Cathair        AUD Audioslavia            249
59	Hastmead Diamante   OSR Osarius                248
60	Albrecht Turkish    CAM Candelaria And Marquez 247
61	Revolutionaries     EUR Eura                   245
62	Jamaica Giants      JSY Jasĭyun                242
63	Atlético Jutense    CAF Cafundéu               242
64	Sporting Iturributa ASG Astograth              236
65	Ciudad Soluca       SRG Sargossa               235
66	Stanley United      WZI West Zirconia.         234
67	Heidelstadt Falken  JSY Jasĭyun                234
68	Caires City         CAM Candelaria And Marquez 231
69	AC Izotz Zubia      AUD Audioslavia            229

The side had one golden era in Season 48 that was as short as it was bright. Over the course of three cycles, the side won the second division, won the Series B Champions Cup, qualified for the Champions Cup and then, in that third season, won that too. If you’ve ever wondered if a team has won back-to-back SBCC/CC UICA titles, look no further than the Jamaican Giant.

Speaking of Jamaican giants, Osarius had established itself as a force in domestic football by the time Grasshoppers Turic won the fourth UHC championship from Metropolis Alligators in the CC group stage. They’d keep the belt until that quarter-final with Jamaica Giants.

The Grasshoppers would win the battle, unifying both titles with a 2-1 win. The Grasshoppers would win the war, progressing to the semi-finals on away goals. The spoils, though, would go to the Giants, to took the title home with them, returning in cycle 42 to go on an eleven-game tear with the unified belt.

The unified title makes it to season 48 without issue, but it’s immediately pulled out from UICA football in the preliminary round of the Globe Cup, SK Franz Josef City, champions after a second-leg win over Navon Beach in season 47’s Champions Cup quarter-final, comfortably win the first leg of their preliminary with The Royal Barangay’s Racing Xinghua Baoyam, but a 1-0 defeat in the second leg takes the title to the Barangay. Gallingly, it will stay there for four cycles. The winner of cycle 51’s Supercup will be awarded another blue belt, the same one lost by Jamaica Giants to Grasshoppers Turic and immediately handed back to the UWCC.

The new blue belt lasts just one cycle. It’s unified with the gold belt on the opening match of the group stage in cycle 53’s Champions Cup, bringing to an end a short, glorious period where three belts were in play throughout UICA football, with SC Rinaldi having returned with the black incarnation of the belt.

The fourth and fifth titles would again be unified, this time in the group stage of Champions Cup 53.

(Buyan) Viztourzys Kolektyvinis 0-3 Sporting Iturributa (Astograth]
Unofficial Heavyweight Championship Unification Bout. Champions Cup 53 Group Stage.

Sporting Iturributa are another club to have played under more than one trigram. The Iturributans, voted Iturributan Team of the Century by UICA after cycle 50, have represented both their region and wider Astograth on the inter-associational stage. Thirteen times national champions, former Cygnus Cup winners and twice representatives of Astograth/Iturributa in the Ides of March cup, the Chevrons have represented their nation - whichever nation that is at the time - more than any other club from the Rushmori stalwarts.

Their opponents, Viztourzys Kolektyvinis, nicknamed the Red Machine, had won the Globe Cup in cycle 51, had won five of the previous six national championships and, with the game being played at the Nova Pylimasstadionas, went into the game as slight favourites.

Like a joy-ridden Ferrari, the Red Machine crashed against the Chevrons. Unlike a joy-ridden Ferrari, the Chevrons would lose their title to Raynor City United in the very next game, and RCU would take the unified title to the knockout stages.

The fact that the Black belt is here to stay means the fifth belt never has to make a return, despite the fact that the fourth championship only lasts until Season 54 before departing UICA football for good. It’s successfully defended in the final of that season’s Champions Cup by virtue of a 1-1 draw after 90 minutes. The holders lose on penalties, but hold onto the title.

They would not venture back into inter-associational football until IFCF cycle 5.

Garitzeta Racing Club
Iturributa / Astograth

Garitzeta Racing Club are another team to have represented both Iturrbuta and Astograth on the inter-associational stage. Whereas the likes of Sporting, Iturributa United and Iturraitz and the like represented the either/or over 25 or so cycles, though, Garitzeta played only eleven seasons of either Globe Cup or Champions Cup football, and are currently more notable for being a second tier side in Astograth - which is, with all due respect, not a great level of notability at all.

Despite their newfound mediocrity, the Other Racing won their first and only UHC title in the semi-final of the Champions Cup in Season 54, defeating CA Paulinthal home and away to make the final where Earent’s Nithgard failed to defeat them inside the ninety minutes before taking the game on penalty kicks.

Garitzeta Racing Club brought their Unofficial Heavyweight Championship with them to IFCF Season 5’s Liga B Champions Trophy, traversing two preliminary rounds before dropping the belt to Evenfar in the group stage. Evenfar would lose it to Falkner United on matchday two but gain the title back on matchday six, removing the belt from circulation.

Evenfar remain your Unofficial Heavyweight Champions.

Every UHC Winner - Cycle 1-73

[The Idiot Project]

The UICA Deep Field
Nothing is boring if you look close enough.

Over 73 cycles, certain teams played one another a silly amount of times. Here’s almost every matchup to have been played on ten or more occasions.

-----------------------------------------Games   1   -   2
Matchup                                     Pld   W   D   W
Sonoma Centre Panthers vs Raynor City United 16   11  4   1
Petardos S/A vs Raynor City United           14   7   2   5
Qidade Savana vs Petardos S/A                14   7   1   6
Qidade Savana vs Neurologists                14   8   1   5
CS Sept-Onze Ourseville vs Yuba United       12   1   3   8
Raynor City United vs Albrecht FC            12   3   1   8
Green Island vs Yuba United                  12   5   3   4
Petardos S/A vs Yuba United                  12   5   0   7
Neurologists vs Sokojiwa Dosi CK             12   5   3   4
Hondo FC vs Cafundó do Juta                  12   3   2   7
Carter FC vs Sonoma Center Panthers          12   4   2   6
Raynor City United vs Neurologists           12   7   2   3
Yuba United vs AS Bezieres                   12   8   2   2
Albrecht FC vs Yuba United                   11   3   5   3
Yuba United vs Qidade Savana                 11   6   3   2
Sonoma Center Panthers vs Cafundó do Juta    11   7   3   1
Caires City vs Raynor City United            11   4   2   5
Petardos S/A vs CF Mont-Pluie                10   2   5   3
Albrecht Turkish vs Soldarian FC             10   5   2   3
Raynor City United vs Medoria Löwen          10   6   2   2
Mylfe CE vs Dunboor FC                       10   3   2   5
Ranca Toco vs Caires City                    10   1   5   4
CS Ourseville 1093 vs Caires City            10   3   3   4
Neurologists vs Yuba United                  10   1   3   6
Psychiatrists vs Petardos S/A                10   1   3   6
Yuba United vs Psychiatrists                 10   3   3   4
Mercia Bromham vs Atlético Jutense           10   5   1   4
Petardos S/A vs Neurologists                 10   4   1   5
Surgeons vs CA Paulinthal                    10   3   5   2
Hondo FC vs Yuba United                      10   2   1   7
Pythons vs Ibini FC                          10   2   3   5
Ibini FC vs Yuba United                      10   2   3   5
East Franz Athletic vs Echegoyan FC          10   6   2   2
FC Endeavour vs Brinemouth                   10   5   2   3

Aside from the sheer amount of Vanorian and Paripanan teams throughout the list - which is understandable given that those two associations are the only two that entered every single UICA season - one of the most noticeable aspects of this list is a general lack of zeroes and ones. If two teams played one another regularly, they generally shared the spoils. It’s rare for one team to win more than 50% of all encounters with a rival, and the more times two teams have played, the more likely it is that their versus record is more or less equal.

With the exception of the matchup at the top of this list.

Code    Match#   Cyc  Comp.      NAT           Home           H     A  Away                    NAT
C04GB03   632    4    CC  Group  VAL      Raynor City United  1  -  1  Sonoma Center Panthers  COM
C04GB11   640    4    CC  Group  COM  Sonoma Center Panthers  2  -  0  Raynor City United      VAL
C10K05A   4394   10   CC  2nd R  VAL      Raynor City United  1  -  2  Sonoma Center Panthers  COM
C10K05B   4402   10   CC  2nd R  COM  Sonoma Center Panthers  3  -  1  Raynor City United      VAL
C15Q02A   8145   15   CC  QFs    COM  Sonoma Center Panthers  1  -  0  Raynor City United      VAL
C15Q02B   8149   15   CC  QFs    VAL      Raynor City United  1  -  2  Sonoma Center Panthers  COM
C19Q03A   11424  19   CC  QFs    COM  Sonoma Center Panthers  2  -  1  Raynor City United      VAL
C19Q03B   11428  19   CC  QFs    VAL      Raynor City United  0  -  4  Sonoma Center Panthers  COM
C32S01A   23256  32   CC  SFs    COM  Sonoma Center Panthers  2  -  2  Raynor City United      VAL
C32S01B   23258  32   CC  SFs    VAL      Raynor City United  0  -  1  Sonoma Center Panthers  COM
C46GD03   41118  46   CC  Group  VAL      Raynor City United  1  -  2  Sonoma Center Panthers  COM
C46GD11   41126  46   CC  Group  COM  Sonoma Center Panthers  3  -  1  Raynor City United      VAL
C56GD02   57412  56   CC  Group  COM  Sonoma Center Panthers  2  -  2  Raynor City United      VAL
C56GD10   57420  56   CC  Group  VAL      Raynor City United  5  -  0  Sonoma Center Panthers  COM
C62K02A   66184  62   CC  2nd R  COM  Sonoma Center Panthers  1  -  1  Raynor City 56’United    VAL
C62K02B   66192  62   CC  2nd R  VAL      Raynor City United  2  -  3  Sonoma Center Panthers  COM

“Let that be a lesson to you” shout RCU after demolishing the Panthers 5-0 in the group stage of cycle 56’s Champions Cup, “nobody beats Raynor City United eight times in a row”.

The fact that Rawrcrush Cinematic Universe have a bogey team is like finding out that Thor used to get picked on at school. The Panthers, while unquestionably one of the greatest sides in club football history, had a ridiculous hoodoo over the Vanorian heavyweights. There’s no smoke and mirrors here, like there might be when looking at the records of similarly tanky teams like AFC Treason and Directus, who had to first wander into the firing line as an unranked n00b at some point. Both RCU and SCP have always been present in UICA football. This is a proper hoodoo that, on a blustery winter’s evening in deepest, darkest southwestern Atlantian Oceania, was snapped by an RCU team in full-on limit-break mode.

Panthers versus Rockers is at the top of this list, but the list is missing the absolute number one most-played matchup in UICA history.

C02K04A  VAL  Raynor City United  2  -  1  Carter FC  JSY
C02K04B  JSY  Carter FC           1  -  1  Raynor City United  VAL
C03GC03  VAL  Raynor City United  1  -  0  Carter FC           JSY
C03GC11  JSY  Carter FC           1  -  2  Raynor City United  VAL
C31GD05  JSY  Carter FC           1  -  1  Raynor City United  VAL
C31GD07  VAL  Raynor City United  0  -  1  Carter FC           JSY
C32Q04A  JSY  Carter FC           2  -  1  Raynor City United  VAL
C32Q04B  VAL  Raynor City United  3  -  1  Carter FC           JSY
C36GA03  VAL  Raynor City United  1  -  0  Carter FC           JSY
C36GA11  JSY  Carter FC           4  -  2  Raynor City United  VAL
C39GG03  VAL  Raynor City United  2  -  0  Carter FC           JSY
C39GG11  JSY  Carter FC           1  -  2  Raynor City United  VAL
C45Q02A  JSY  Carter FC           1  -  1  Raynor City United  VAL
C45Q02B  VAL  Raynor City United  0  -  0  Carter FC           JSY
C56GD03  VAL  Raynor City United  0  -  2  Carter FC           JSY
C56GD11  JSY  Carter FC           1  -  0  Raynor City United  VAL
C57GG03  JSY  Carter FC           3  -  3  Raynor City United  VAL
C57GG11  VAL  Raynor City United  2  -  0  Carter FC           JSY
C61K02A  VAL  Raynor City United  1  -  1  Carter FC           JSY
C61K02B  JSY  Carter FC           3  -  2  Raynor City United  VAL
C63GA03  JSY  Carter FC           2  -  1  Raynor City United  VAL
C63GA11  VAL  Raynor City United  3  -  0  Carter FC           JSY

On 22 occasions between 2009 and 2018, RCU faced off against Carter FC of Jasiyun in the Champions Cup. And only in the Champions Cup. And mainly in just the group stages or the early knockout rounds. Raynor City United edged the series, with nine wins to Carter’s 7.

It’s somewhat surprising that the two teams with the most number of appearances in UICA football - Yuba United and Raynor City - only played one another on six occasions.

C21Q03A  COM  Yuba United         1-0  Raynor City United  VAL
C21Q03B  VAL  Raynor City United  1-1  Yuba United         COM
C34Z00F  COM  Yuba United         1-1  Raynor City United  VAL (1-2 AET)
C49K04A  COM  Yuba United         0-1  Raynor City United  VAL
C49K04B  VAL  Raynor City United  1-2  Yuba United         COM
!671004  VAL  Raynor City United  3-0  Yuba United         COM

The six games include two Champions Cup knockout matches, both won narrowly by Yuba United, a Champions Cup final won by Raynor City United in extra time and a one-off UICA Centenary game at the Battleground in Raynor City, which the home team won by three goals to nil.

Teams who stuck around for a long time tended to play against one another at least once. Those who ended up playing at least one hundred UICA matches are part of the One Hundred Club. Each and every member of the club is detailed here in an image we call the UICA Deep Field, so called because it looks a little bit like the Hubble Deep Field.

The Hubble Deep Field which is what happened when a dude stared really hard at something boring and distant but found that it looked kinda pretty if you gave it a backstory. It’s very Idiot Project.

[The Idiot Project]

The Sosimo Lissón Metric
Refusing to Lose: Club Remix

The Sosimo Lissón metric is named after the erstwhile former Aguazul striker who won three consecutive World Cup titles with the side in international cycles 57 to 59. The metric attempts to find the greatest ever three-cycle run by a team, where ‘greatest ever’ means ‘lost the least times’. Lissón’s Aguazul side lost only twice in 69 games for a Sosimo Lissón Metric score of 34.5 - the metric simply takes the total games played over three consecutive cycles and divides that figure by how many times a team lost.

The second greatest ever run is by Valanora from cycles 73 to 75, with a score of 35, while Schottia’s 78-80 side were the only team to lose just one game over three cycles, attaining a score of 70. You can watch that Idiot Project video here for the full story. It’s one of the best TIP videos. I’m sure it still holds up even if the ending has been given away.

In international football, a decent team can expect to play around 70 WCC games over the course of three cycles. In UICA football, a good team plays around half as many games. If they don’t lose often in one cycle, there’s a good chance they won’t have to play as many preliminary games in the next cycle. 6 group games plus anywhere between 2 and 10 knockouts makes for an average of around 12 matches for a capable football club in any given UICA season. Most international teams play nearer 18 even if they don’t qualify for a tournament. Also, as we’ve mentioned before, you’re much more likely to play teams of equal or greater standing than your own in UICA football, and often enough that high Sosimo Lissón Metric scores are much rarer. in the club game.

In international football, Sarzonia have the tenth-best Sosimo Lissón score of all time - a 19.67 gained between cycles 22 and 24. In the UICA era, the tenth best team in the Sosimo Lissón Metric standings is San Solari FC for their run between cycles 13 and 15. Their score over this period? Just 8.6. They lost 5 times in 21 games, and it appears this type of record, while rubbish for an international team, is excellent for a club side.

International football’s Sosimo Lissón chart. Most teams have a score between 2 and 8.
The highest team has 70.


The Club version of the Sosimo Lissón chart has lower scores at the top. The highest-placed team has a score of just 18.
Most teams have a score between 2 and 4.

At the bottom of UICA’s Sosimo Lissón chart are Football Miracle Izaki (Damukuni, cycles 70-72), Siêu tuyệt vời (Unlreal 229, Cycles 18-20), Anseriska FK (Anseriska, Cycles 23-25), Cotham Knights (The Islands of Qutar, Cycles 15-17) and Sjandle FootballKlub (Schmeigelland, Cycles 48-50), all with a score of just 1, meaning that, in their greatest ever run in inter-associational football, they lost every game they had for three consecutive cycles.

The requirement for a team to have played three cycles consecutively removes most teams from the list, but while there are 645 teams to have played at least 3 consecutive cycles of international football, over a thousand have done so in the club game. The chart above cuts 500 of them off the end.

So. You’re wondering who’s in the top ten, right?

Pos Club               Era  NAT  Nation                 Sosimo Lissón Metric
001 ???                                                 18
002 Ranca Toco        8-10  CAF  Cafundéu               12
003 Qidade Savana    31-33  JSY  Jasĭyun                10.5
004 Caires City      13-15  CAM  Candelaria And Marquez 10.2
005 Spartangrad      49-51  EUR  Eura                   10
006 Prune Farmers FC 57-59  GGS  Gregoryisgodistan      10
007 Canterlot Stars  55-57  EQS  Equestrian States      10
008 Feest United     65-67  KTW  Katawohan              10
009 Iguani           40-42  PZJ  The Pazhujeb Islands   8.67
010 San Solari FC    13-15  COM  Capitalizt SLANI       8.6

It is a chin-strokey top ten. Ranca Toco are often in the upper echelons of these UICA lists, having had a strong side in the early days of UICA football in a time where there were fewer big teams to play against. Qidade Savana and Spartangrad aren’t surprises, and neither is the Canedelarian and/or Marquesi side in fourth, but… Prune Farmers? Canterlot Stars? And who on earth are Feest United?

Wait okay it’s my job to tell you who they are.

Feest United had already entered two UICA cycles by the time season 65 came around. They played all of two Globe Cup matches that cycle, drawing twice with Turín FC of San José Guayabal and departing on away goals, going undefeated against Olastor’s Cavecla Sports Club and Turori’s Cednia Rovers in cycle 66, losing the latter on away goals after two draws, and beating Lusitanha’s Seviha FC in the preliminaries of the next Globe Cup before losing over two legs to Carter FC, 1-0, 0-1, 1-3 on penalties.

One loss in 10 games. Eighth best team of all time. Sceptical? Well just look at Katowohan’s football website and look at the amount of goals that Feest striker Teun Wilms scored. 68 in 38 games. Sixty-eight. He didn’t even win the golden boot. Scary league.

Look at the number one team, though. A Sossimo Lissón score of 18. That’s mighty impressive considering how easy it is to lose in UICA football.

So who is it? Who’s here at the top of this metric?

Okay so like.. I don’t expect everyone reading this to be familiar with Idiot Project tropes but… honestly, when it comes to the question of ‘I wonder who is at the top of this chart’ you should really already know the answer…

Clicking the image takes you directly to YouTube

[The Idiot Project]

0

Prologue
Written: December 2022, January 2025

The entire script for Episode 1 of the Idiot Project ran to under 8,000 words. That’s including quotes, some light stage directions and random notes scribbled in the margin, plus a few sentences here and there that would end up on the cutting-room floor. Episode 2 ran to just over 8,000 words, while Episode Three was supposed to be a series of three-minute shorts, and so goes under 8,000 again.

Episode 4’s nine videos run to 10,000 words if you include a variety of notes and scrapped ideas - just 7,000 if you don’t. Episode Five, with its painfully thorough stage directions, had 11,000 words, again with a lot of discarded or thoroughly re-written content appearing in red and added to the bottom just in case I needed it again. The final script was under 10,000.

So, the average *final* Idiot Project script runs to between 7,000 and 9,000 words.

I’m not quite sure how to say this, so I’m just going to come out with it. The entire word-count for all the scripts I've written post TIP5 is about the same length, if not more, than the entire final script for TIP 1-5.

I’ve written about 43,000 words in total.

I am now certain I will never have the time to do anything with in terms of converting these ideas to video. So here we are.

Writing was done in April 2021, June 2021, July 2022, January 2023 and August 2024. This prologue was written in December 2022, but I’m writing *this* line in January 2025. This sentence I’m writing right now is from April 2025, for the final go-round of ‘edits’ to the script. These ‘edits’ have, naturally, resulted in ‘whole new chapters’ and ‘massively altered narrative threads’ because I apparently never learn. The tone is a little different from TIPs 1-5, in that while I think the writing is better in general, it’s a little all-over-the-place in terms of perspective. It stands to reason I mean, five different versions of me wrote it, for starters.

I finally moved the most recent attempts at further TIP videos, written in late 2024, from the ‘active’ document to the ‘nope’ document in April 2025, realising that the words were sort of like having a pair of football boots in my cupboard just in case I get picked to play for Brazil next week. In both cases: I’m 40. I’m busy. It’s not going to happen.

Rereading the final scripts now, I was never really going to be able to make most of it. The 2021 and 2024 versions require a lot of new skills and hard work, the 2023 scripts just don’t really work in video form. Parts of the script are over-written, with too much information about too small a part of a wider overall story, parts are just <music bit goes here> at points where I figured the visuals would take over. I’ve tried to convert those parts into prose, but some just don’t work and I’ve just left some parts totally unfinished. You’ll see this a few episodes in, when one of three ‘protagonists’ mysteriously vanishes halfway through. There are also other users, characters and nations who will seem conspicuous from their absence. That they don’t appear is due to the unfortunate fact that, well, modestly successful footballing nations with solid wordbuilding and complex characters are more time consuming to research. At least compared to those teams whose stories can be told through numbers, or teams that are bafflingly surreal or just plain gash. I mean, let’s say *you* were going to write about, say, Emperor Boston. Where would you start? His assassination? Or, much later, like his losing of his marbles before representing his nation in all eleven positions in World Cup 86? His story alone involves researching 15 years of intermittent storylines woven together by multiple nations. If you were going to make a video series, with all the work that entails in and of itself, and you felt you could choose between either covering a prolific writer like Bostopia or someone who’s word-counts were a little easier to deal with… which would you go for? Throughout The Idiot Project, I have usually opted for the latter. For example in this first Episode of Unrecorded, I tell everyone about that time in World Cup 11 when a newbie Praying2God were so annoyed at losing a few football matches that Adolf Hitler opened fire on their team bus.

Of the various sections of *Unrecorded*, the Praying2God bit would have been the easiest to make. But for one thing. Back in 2019, I made a commitment: No criticism, nothing edgy or off-putting. Just positivity, even to Krytenia.

It simply isn’t possible to put some of Praying2God’s early RPs in a positive light.

You’ll see what I mean. The ‘hitler blew up my bus’ thing isn’t even the bad part.

[The Idiot Project]

TIP Unrecorded will form the basis for my RPing in WCs 99 and 100. I'm posting this early just as a proof of concept - making quotes look right etc.

And I feel I should say one thing: This episode is easily the most controversial one I've ever done.

1

The Warriors Come Out to Play
Written: March 2023, February 2024, April 2025

“A happy fart never comes from a miserable ass.”

:- Martin Luther. Author. Theologian. Marauding Centre Forward.

Imagine a hundred people flipping coins. Cameras everywhere, the world transfixed by every outcome. The best flippers, those who get heads more often than not, are given praise, social status and precious metals. The media is enraptured from start to finish. Rivalries are created, friendships are struck, flipping hands take on personalities of their own. You see one of them selling cuff-links on a billboard near your home, one of them is apparently dating someone in the movie industry (a grip) and at a certain time of year, the only thing people talk about is the FingerBowl.

So you start to dream. *You* could do that. You’re as deserving of praise and respect as anyone else. Your flipping hand is strong and sinewy, your coin shiny and aerodynamic, your thumb handsome, charming and cheeky. A media darling. Good on talk shows. Svelte. So you sign up. You take your place. You wave to the cameras. You take your coin. And you flip.

Tails.

That’s fine. To be expected. It’s your first go after all. Go again.

Tails. Tails.

It’s okay. Three isn’t a pattern. Three is a backstory. A setback the history books will say you overcame with courage and dignity.

Tails. Tails.

Okay, by now everyone else has gotten at least one head, most two or three. You’re one of five flippers who have none. And those other four are nerds. Casuals. Barely paying attention. You’re busy learning from your mistakes, reading books on flipping tactics in your spare time, working out, getting stronger. You’re itching to show the world just what you can do.

Tails. Tails.

Statistically, this should happen. Given the amount of flippers we have, at least one person should be coming up with losing throws. But why is it *you*. Why is it always *you*. Maybe if you just concentrate this time. Block out the competition. It’s just you and the coin.

Tails. Tails.

By now, even the nerds have a head or two. You *should* have had one by now. Why aren’t you flipping any heads? You’re all ready to go when it *does* happen. Multiple cameras to show action replays from all angles, interviews with the family, articles on your right hand’s training regime and the importance of its background in magic, tiddlywinks and banking.

Tails. Tails.

You change it up. Maybe your hand is injured? Maybe your coin has been tampered with? Maybe it’s time to introduce your young, exciting new substitute, Lefty? What a story it will make when the shy young rookie turns out to be a natural.

Tails. Tails.

I mean well of course, throwing Lefty into the pressure cooker of world coin-flipping was never going to work straight away. Lefty needs time to bed in, learn the playbook, gain the trust of the coin. Maybe it is the coin? Is this even real copper? You should have a word with your sportswear supplier, Ea-Sports. In the mean time, let's change it up for a nickel alloy, that’ll…

Tails. Tails.

You fire your flipping coach. A sign of desperation? No! Of course not. Just ask your nation's press, who will back you up on this 100%. I mean what other explanation could there be than an issue at management level? Anyway, to hell with this year's competition, you’re playing for pride now. No, even better, you’re setting yourself up for the next edition. You just need to go out on a high.

Tails.

The best flippers are all on the boat by now. Everyone else is quietly optimistic for next season. You’re just standing there with your coin. You did everything right. You did everything everyone else did. Why did this happen to you?

A steep and thorough descent into abject madness is completely forgiven for each and every new entrant to the Nationstates World Cup. The journey from the tail to the head of the rankings is one many take, but few ever complete. The differences between success and failure on this journey are marginal. It’s coin flips all the way up.

Good thing about descents into madness, though. They’re fun to look at 20 years down the line.

Remember to be patient with our team because its their first World Cup, and nations tend to do poorly in their first Cup.”

Praying2God - 2004-01-02

In order to *descend*, you have to start with something keeping you off the ground. Not physically, I'm not talking hills or stepladders. Things like Dignity. Hope. Ambition. A Steadfast Dedication to Not Looking Facts In The Face. In most cases, it's a form of Causal Hubris. In other words, an utterly naive belief that anything you do can have a direct effect on how well the team plays. Team talks, changes of tactics, substituting Righty for Lefty, they give the illusion of control. They fool you into thinking you’re making progress. But the more progress you think you’ve made, the more room you’ve put between yourself and the ground, and the further you have to free-fall when Margaret brings you down to earth.

In terms of the illusion of control, Praying2God have it worse than most. Just look at their choice of manager,

0-1 vs Anti Nazis
Jesus Christ: I'm proud of our team. They played well, and never gave up the hope that we could come out of the game with at least one point towards qualifying. Anti-Nazis just managed to convert one more scoring opportunity than we did, that's all. Both teams came off that field winners today.

Praying2God - 2004-01-02

0-0 vs Iansisle
I spoke with head coach Jesus Christ after the game, and he was somewhat satisfied with the result. However, he echoed the statement made by the captain and suggested that we might see some changes made to try to shake up the offense.

Praying2God - 2004-01-04

We’re sure Jesus Christ has turned out for other international football teams. As the joke goes, He’s notable for being a goalkeeper. Here, in His role of manager, He’s struggling a little.

0-3 vs Cockbill Street
It was just announced a few minutes ago just what the changes were that Praying2God Head Coach Jesus Christ promised after their humiliating 0-3 loss to Cockbill Street yesterday. It seems that he has gone with a youth movement, if nothing else to give them some experience for the next World Cup. The most notable change is that Joshua Harris, who played so admirably in the second half of the loss to Cockbill Street, will make his first start in the next match, at home against Liverpool England.

Praying2God - 2004-01-05

In an attempt to take control of his team’s destiny, Jesus Christ tries the righty/lefty trick, changing up the team’s goalkeeper by removing the established C.S. Lewis and throwing in the young understudy, Joshua Harris.

Just quickly: First team goalkeeper C.S. Lewis, reserve goalkeeper Joshua Harris. Do you recognise one, both or neither of those names? One is more noteworthy than the other. In 2025, it's not even close which name is more recogniseable. In 2004? Let's just say it's a little closer. Keep that with you, we'll return to this later.

Swapping out Lewis for Harris has to work. Regardless of the scoreline. It has to work. Because if it doesn't work, then you have no control over what's happening. As Epicurus once said during a game of Football Manager -289/-288: "Is God willing to prevent three-nil drubbings, but not able? Then His job security surely depends on a vote of confidence from the board."

0-3 vs Liverpool England
Jesus Christ: Even though we may have lost on the scoreboard, we scored a moral victory today. We held LE to only three goals when they have already put up more than that in other games in qualifying. … Hopefully, we've made it through the tough part of our schedule and we can start winning some games against defenses that are not as formidable as the ones we've faced so far. After all, we haven't seen either of the other rookie teams in our pool yet, so we have a good chance to win a couple of games before getting back into this group of teams in the second half of qualifying.

Praying2God - 2004-01-06

Top 3 RPing Nations
1. Oglethorpia (9 RPs)
2. The Belmore Family (7 RPs)
3. Rejistania (6 RPs)
3. Praying2God (6 RPs)
OOC: Anybody else find it funny that I'm amongst the top RPing nations, and yet my team is struggling mightily to score or win?

Praying2God - 2004-01-07

Trying to make sense out of random numbers is an art form. You’re vaguely aware that your team is getting better. They must be getting better. You’re just waiting for the tide to turn. As soon as you get over this hump, then you can really get going.

2-1 vs Pablicosta
In the first half, captain Martin Luther took a pass from Martin Luther King Jr. and sent a rocket past the Pablicosta keeper. Then in the second half, young Cassie Bernall, in only her second World Cup appearance took a cross from Dietrich Bonhoeffer and headed it into the net for a 2-0 lead. Late in the game, Pablicosta cut the lead to one on a freak own goal when James Dobson hit Chuck Colson in the back of the head on a clearing attempt and the ball bounced past a stunned Joshua Harris and into the net. Pope John Paul came on for Dobson and played admirably.

Praying2God - 2004-01-07

The thing is, there is no hump. Tides are driven by narrative, and there is no narrative in random numbers. For all Jesus’s words, he simply isn’t the pre-eminent deity of this universe. Margaret doesn’t work in mysterious ways. She doesn’t work at all. Able to effect change, but not willing, Margaret punches Epicurus in the mouth for even thinking of looking at her pint, and can generally be found smoking roll-ups on a beach-side deck chair, watching chaos unfold in the way only chaos can.

Praying2God lose six of their next seven games.

Sometimes it's close.

0-1 vs The Lowland Clans
TLC got their goal when James Dobson turned the ball over in his own box and Joshua Harris couldn't get over in time to keep the ball out of the net. After that Praying2God dominated the game, but couldn't manage to score the equalizer.

Praying2God - 2004-01-09

Sometimes, the side are so oppressed that you'd be forgiven for thinking they were in a mid-budget straight-to-DVD movie about honest god-fearing fair-haired teenagers in the far-flung future year of 2013 where Christianity is banned and their only hope to prevent the evil urban Gun-Collecting trucks from taking papa's rifle is to teach them about Jesus.

0-1 vs Beestings

SHAM DOES IN WARRIORS!!!

Praying2God's match against the nation of Beestings was decided before the opening whistle when six of Praying2God's starters were given red cards for "uniform violations." Beestings went on to win the game 1-0 on a goal in the 89th minute. Praying2God played the game under protest, and a committee is investigating the allegations of misconduct by the referees. Meanwhile, it has been announced that because the red cards should never have been given out, the suspensions that normally come with a red card have been waived for the Praying2God players. World Cup Officials have also apologized to the entire Praying2God team and their fans. The players sent off included captain Martin Luther, midfielders Cassie Bernall and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, defensemen James Dobson and Pope John Paul, and forward John Calvin. All members of the Praying2God and Beestings teams were unavailable for comment after the game.

Praying2God - 2004-01-09

2-0 vs Anti-Nazis
The Praying2God Warriors earned their first ever World Cup victory at home yesterday against the Anti-Nazis 2-0 at the House of Prayer before a packed house of 90,000 screaming fans. This was expected to be a close game because Praying2God had lost 0-1 at Anti-Nazis in their first ever World Cup match. It was a well fought game by both teams, and after the first half the scoreboard was barren. However, in the 52nd minute Francis of Assisi converted a penalty kick for a 1-0 lead. Later on, captain Martin Luther scored his second goal of the Cup on a cross from fellow forward John Calvin in the 84th minute to complete the scoring. Joshua Harris made 9 saves for his first World Cup shutout. The Warriors next visit Iansisle with whom they drew 0-0 in their first meeting.

Praying2God 2004-01-11

Sometimes they're out-battled.

1-3 vs Iansisle
WARRIORS OUTBATTLED (AGAIN)

Praying2God was no match for Iansisle today on the road. However, they did manage a late goal to avoid the shutout. Iansisle scored once in the first half on an ugly goal that bounced off of Pope John Paul to an open Iansisle player who promptly burried the shot before Joshua Harris could recover. Then in the early second half, Iansisle converted a penalty shot after Cassie Bernall fouled a player in the box. After Praying2God cut the lead to one on a goal by John Calvin in the 81st minute, off a corner by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, it looked like they might come back to salvage a point, but Iansisle capitalized on another mental lapse by the Praying2God defense and added an insurance goal to win 3-1.

Head Coach Jesus Christ was very dissapointed in his team's defense effort today

Praying2God 2004-01-12

Sometimes they're out-duelled.

1-3 vs Cockbill Street
WARRIORS OUTDUELED ON COCKBILL STREET

The Praying2God Warriors were beaten up by Cockbill Street yesterday in the nation of Cockbill Street. The Warriors jumped out to an early 1-0 lead when Dietrich Bonhoeffer managed to head the ball into the net in the 4th minute on a cross by captain Martin Luther. However, C. S. Lewis' return to the net proved disastorous for the Warriors, as Cockbill Street answered the Warriors goal with three first half goals of their own. Consequently, Praying2God Head Coach Jesus Christ made the move (again) to Joshua Harris, who didn't start because he had pulled a muscle in warm-ups. Harris was an improvement as he only allowed one goal in the second half, despite the injury. Harris is supposed to be full strength in time for the Warriors next game at Liverpool England (ouch). Head Coach Jesus Christ was overheard telling his team after the game that he liked the fact that they were scoring, but they needed to keep the ball out of the net as well.

Praying2God 2004-01-13

They lose to Champions.

0-1 vs Liverpool England
WARRIORS FALL JUST SHORT IN BID FOR MONUMENTAL UPSET

The Praying2God Warriors almost pulled off one of the all-time greatest upsets in World Cup history in their game at Liverpool England. LE, which came into the game unbeaten in qualifying suffered a tremendous let down at home. The Warriors came out looking for blood after being demolished 0-3 at home by LE earlier in qualifying. Most of the game was contested in the midfield area, with each team managing a few opportunities. Both goalies played admirably, making saves on the few opportunities the other team managed. However, in stoppage time at the end of the game, LE was awarded a penalty shot on a questionable call by the referee. The ref soon made an even more questionable call, as he blew the whistle to end the game at about the same time as the ball crossed the goal line. After a good fifteen minutes of discussion between the referee and the linesman, the goal was allowed to stand, giving the Warriors yet another heartbreaking defeat.

Praying2God 2004-01-15

They lose to Randoms.

0-2 vs Pablicosta
WARRIORS MISSING IN BATTLE AT HOME

The Praying2God Warriors seemed to not show up for their game against Pablicosta played before a packed house at the House of Prayer. The result was a humiliating 0-2 defeat that dropped the Warriors into last place in their group with only two matches to play. The frustration could easily be heard in Praying2God Head Coach Jesus Christ's voice at the post-match press conference. The Warriors hope to get the ship righted in time for their last two matches of their debut in the World Cup.

Praying2God 2004-01-15

They just lose.

0-3 vs The Lowland Clans
WARRIORS BEATEN BADLY BY THE LOWLAND CLANS

The Praying2God Warriors put up a horrible effort yesterday against The Lowland Clans and lost 0-3. It appears that the Warriors are just trying to finish so they can regroup for the next cup. It was clear to all in attendance at TLC that the Warriors were not mentally in the game. The home crowd was even booed their own team each time the Warriors gained possession. Praying2God Head Coach Jesus Christ has promised a shake up of the roster for the next World Cup.

Praying2God 2004-01-17

The performance borders on pathetic. Really pathetic. As pathetic as, say, a forty year old man searching quarter-century old forum threads on the wayback machine in order to dunk on teenage fundamentalist christians for committing the sin of using their own cultural references on a sports world-building game they like.

You have to be a little impressed by the fact that, with increasingly nothing to play for and with the random number gods slapping them hard around the back of the head every day, Praying2God just keep going. They reach all over the place for RP inspiration. Thing is, ‘all over the place’ naturally means ‘from between 1997 to 2004’, which means we get things like this incredibly busy intern.

Bill and Jim have been fired and their TV station has gone bankrupt becuase of the affair the two men had with one of Bill's interns.

Praying2God - 2004-01-09

My favourite trope is the fact that such a Holy team is constantly beset by bad luck. So much bad luck. If you were a religious man, you could almost call them acts of God. You'll find an example in this unfortunate ending to their final group game.

1-1 vs Beestings
The Warriors took an early lead when captain Martin Luther found an open Martin Luther King Jr. at the top of the box in the 17th minute for a 1-0 lead. It looked like the Warriors were going to close with a victory until the last seconds of stoppage time at the end of the game when Mother Theresa had a clearing attempt take a strange bounce off her and past keeper Joshua Harris to tie the score. :cry: The whistle blew before the Warriors were able to kick-off. There are major shake-ups coming to the Praying2God roster, which will be announced once they have occured.

Praying2God 2004-01-19

Praying2God end the campaign with nothing. Arguably less than they started with, as the hit to their sanity can’t be understated. Yet this is the calm before the storm. Even before the end of World Cup 11, things will take a turn for the worse. Let’s take advantage of the quiet for a second to look at the Praying2God roster that just went 2-2-10. It’s fascinating.

Head Coach: Jesus Christ
Assistant Coach: Simon Peter "The Rock"
Goaltending Coach: John the Beloved
Trainer: Saul "Paul" the Evangelist

Goalie: C.S. Lewis #4, age 24*
Goalie: Joshua Harris #16, age 17
Defenseman: Mother Teresa #2, age 28*
Defenseman: William Tyndale #5, age 19*
Defenseman: Chuck Colson #19, age 26*
Defenseman: Michael W. Smith #17, age 19*
Defenseman: Pope John Paul #3, age 28
Defenseman: James Dobson #21, age 26
Midfielder: Billy Graham #8, age 27*
Midfielder: Dietrich Bonhoeffer #7, age 20*
Midfielder: Martin Luther King Jr. #9, age 19*
Midfielder: Augustine #6, age 27
Midfielder: Cassie Bernall #15, age 15
Midfielder: Chuck Swindoll #22, age 26
Forward: Martin Luther #11 (captain), age 24*
Forward: Charles Wesley #13, age 26*
Forward: John Wesley #14, age 27*
Forward: John Calvin #20, age 24
Forward: Francis of Assisi #18, age 20
Forward: Constantine #10, age 25

Okay. You can see the general theme. However, I’ll wager that you can’t put a face to every name in the team. Sure, you know half of them. Pope John Paul? Pious guy. Wee hat. Somewhat out of position at left back. Mother Teresa? Saint. Nurse. Bit Racist. Martin Luther? The holy guy with the nails. No, the other one. Francis of Assisi? Yeah he's definitely a religious guy from your brain, who cares that you can't remember where. John Calvin? Two-word answer to the question ‘why are Scotsmen like that’. Dietrich Bonhoeffer? German priest. Criticized Nazis.

So who are these other guys?

John and Charles Wesley were noted 18th century methodists. William Tyndale is on the protestantism Mount Rushmore along with Martin Luther, The Queen, flags, pharisaicality and living in a small grey house.

So the other names, are they venerable ancient theologians as well?

No they are not.

That young backup goalkeeper Joshua Harris wasn’t only saving his team, he was also saving himself. Author of the 1997 book “I Kissed Dating Goodbye”, he was a vocal advocate for a “biblically correct” approach to dating. It's as fun as it sounds. Does such an approach work? Well, twenty years after his book became a bestseller, the author would divorce his wife, leave his pastoral job and denounce Christianity altogether. Just goalkeeper things. The number one, C.S. Lewis, is the early 20th century author of the famed chilren's book The Chronicles of Narnia. He's in this team for his work as an Anglican theologian. If he later went on to leave his lion, divorce his witch and denounce wardrobes altogether, it’s undocumented.

Of the two Chucks, Swindoll was a reasonably uncontroversial megachurch pastor, whereas evangelical christian Chuck Colson was a special advisor in the Nixon administration and the first man to be incarcerated as a result of the Watergate scandal. He’s somehow not the only one here with an association to Tricky Dick. Billy Graham’s Wikipedia page has an extensive section on controversies, with the most prominent being the Watergate recordings of him disparaging Jews. The other sections are entitled ‘views of homosexuality’ and ‘views on women’.

It gets worse.

The first line of James Dobson’s wikipedia page says he “is an American evangelical Christian psychologist,” which frankly makes him sound terrifying. Putting “American evangelical Christian” before any job generally feels like a nice way of saying “Absolutely Not A”. A quick search for the word ‘controversy’ highlights the sentences “Dobson clarifies Pro-Gay SpongeBob Video Controversy”, “Controversial Evangelical Leader Conducts Prayer At Coca-Cola 600” and a longer section about the time Dobson made so much money from allowing Ted Bundy to explain away his rape and murder of thirty women that he was able to make considerable donations to various anti-abortion groups.

And yet that, somehow, is not the worst inclusion in the roster. Before I tell you who that is, it’s time for Praying2God’s post-qualifying roleplays. They’re not competing in the World Cup, but they feel compelled to press on regardless.

:shock: ***BREAKING STORY***

TERRORIST OPENS FIRE AT TEAM BUS

A terrorist from an unidentified country opened fire at the Praying2God Warriors team bus on its way back to the hotel the team was staying at for their match against Beestings. The lone gunman was heard shouting anti-religious comments at the team before opening fire. Unfortunately, nobody got a good look at the terrorist, and he got away before he could be apprehended. Several players were wounded, including some seriously. More details as we get them. Anybody with information is asked to contact the Praying2God police immediately.

Praying2God 2004-01-19

I lack the wherewithal to think of an ‘anti-religious comment’ one might make when gunning down christians with an automatic weapon. “Transubstantiation doubting is for wankers” maybe, but then Pope John Paul is there too. His stance of 'transubstantiation is fine but you probably shouldn't have that gun' would be at odds with his team-mates for two reasons.

**UPDATE**
TRAGEDY STRIKES WARRIORS

A short time ago, Information Minister John Williams announced that young Praying2God midfielder Cassie Bernall had died from her wounds suffered during the terrorist attack on the team bus yesterday afternoon. Williams also announced that two other players are in critical condition and not expected to survive. However, he did not release those names because "the families have not been reached as of this time." It has also been reported that a number of other players were wounded, and some of those wounds may be career ending. There are no leads regarding who the terrorist was. More details as they are released.

Praying2God 2004-01-20

The Praying2God squad suffered another blow today when their whole coaching staff resigned to focus their attention completely on spiritual matters. The previously announced shake-up of the roster will still take place because the Praying2God Soccer Committee is in agreement with the coaching staff that drastic changes need to be made. It is rumored that as few as two or three players will be back on the roster for World Cup XII. Reports also state that some of the players who will not be back on the roster will be offered the coaching positions.

Praying2God 2004-01-21

Now that all the wounded players' families have been notified we can release a list of who was wounded and how severe their injuries are.

Cassie Bernall-already went home to be with her Lord
Dietrich Bonhoeffer-not expected to survive
Martin Luther King Jr.-not expected to survive
Charles Wesley-wounds are career ending
John Wesley-wounds are career ending
Chuck Colson-wounds are career ending
Chuck Swindoll-wounds are career ending
John Calvin-could potentially come back
William Tyndale-could potentially come back
That's all we know for right now. We'll bring you more details as they unfold.

Praying2God 2004-01-21

Okay. So here's the question:

Who is Cassie Bernall?

We've seen her three times in the quotes above, scoring a header, being unfairly sent off for a uniform violation and fouling an Iansisle player to concede a penalty. Maybe you're from a certain part of the United States and you've heard of people like Billy Graham and Chuck Swindoll, and didn't need the foreigner linking wikipedia at you, but I'll wager you're still looking at that name and coming up blank.

Okay. Take a deep breath. When you click on the link below, you might recognise the picture immediately. If not, scroll a little further down on the right. I'll be reading this next part of the story. Join me when you're done.

Cassie Bernall.

MANHUNT CLOSE TO CULPRIT
In a brief press conference held this evening, Information Minister John Williams announced that the police were closing in on the culprit who fired at the Praying2God Warriors team bus after their last game in World Cup XI. He refused to give out any information on the suspect until they had apprehended him. We'll bring you that news when we get it.

Praying2God 2004-01-25

***BREAKING NEWS!!!!!***
TERRORIST CAUGHT!!!
It has just been announced by Information Minister John Williams that the terrorist has been caught. He showed pictures of the location where they found him, in a little eight foot deep hole, by himself with no weapons on him. The report states that after several minutes they got him to confess to the terrorist attack on the soccer team's bus. They say his name is Adolf Hitler, but the authorities are checking to see if that is a fake name to hide a previous record.

Praying2God 2004-01-25

“They say his name is Adolf Hitler” says the journalist. “But we’re checking to see if it’s a fake name to hide a previous record”. Sorry. Exactly how bad is this guy’s record that, when he was looking for a fake name that might cause less concern than his own, ends up with Adolf Fucking Hitler.

HITLER FOUND GUILTY
After a delay in the beginning of his trial, Adolf Hitler was found guilty of four counts of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The plea of not guilty by reason of insanity was rejected after a psychologist for the defense admitted in cross-examination that Hitler was sane and that the defense was paying him off to say that Hitler was insane. The mood outside the courthouse after the verdict was released was one of relief that the proceedings were over, allowing everybody to go on with their lives.

Praying2God 2004-02-05

I don’t know about you, but I only made it as far as “a psychologist for the defense admitted in cross-examination” before I lost the ability to concentrate and instead fixated on this guy who, despite being a qualified psychologist, apparently wilts in the face of questioning as if he hadn't prepared himself for the idea that he might be asked a question about the lie he’d been paid to keep up. Was he not aware that lying is difficult? This guy was Absolutely Not A psychologist.

Okay. Let's talk about Cassie.

I’m sure you can see, now, why I decided that I couldn’t put this episode in video form. I don’t think it would be possible for a video to survive that shift in tone. I couldn’t have just let you read the wikipedia page on your own and then come back to me when you’re ready. It’s a crass enough idea to include her as a player in this team, it also feels crass to include her in this episode of The Idiot Project.

But to include her in the team and then have her die of gunshot wounds is... beyond my vocabulary.

Praying2God isn’t around to defend themselves, so instead, I’ll make a case for their defence.

The Columbine Massacre is similar to the aforementioned Watergate scandal, in that it’s difficult to look at from the vantage point of 2025, a time in which such events have become daily occurrences. I can’t speak for Watergate, which was before even *I* was born, but I can tell you that Columbine was such a major event that I, a foreigner who was 15 at the time, can tell you the names of the two murderers without even looking them up. Where we now have 24/7 televised updates about tariffs or the royals or the culture wars, we once had daily conjecture on Columbine. It permeated the culture.

For this reason, the presence of Cassie on that team-sheet here isn’t a total non-sequitir. For a minority of Christian evangelists, she had become a martyr for answering ‘yes’ to the question ‘are you a Christian?’ by one of the shooters.

Yes, you’re right, it’s utterly ridiculous. But if you’re a home-schooled fundamentalist presbyterian in bumfuck kentucky, it makes perfect sense. And come on, you live in 2025. Look around you. Governments around the world are bending over backwards to forge a new world which makes perfect sense to exactly this type of person, at the expense of all else. We’re all living in a Praying2God RP.

If you’re angry at this and would like to see Praying2God punished somehow, then you’re in luck. Stay tuned for part two.

[The Idiot Project]

2

How to Nuke a God in 10 Matchdays
Written: January 2023, April 2025

The Baptism of Fire tournament preceding World Cup 29 was not a vintage one. Forgotten Qazox puppet Sativaville took the spoils and collectively asked themselves this question: What kind of BoF winner will I be? Like Grand Slam winners Sarzonia, like future champions Bettia? Or forgotten footnotes in history like South Ossetia, Hurfordia or the Liamist States?

Sativaville takes it place in history with the other 15 BoF winners. the big question is will they be like Cuation, the Islands of Qutar, Bettia, Tutori, Dance 2 Revolution and Sarzonia, teams that have gone on to play and win in the World Cup or will they be like Liamist States, Eystrck, South Ossetia or Hurfordia and slip back into the great muck of international play? Hopefully with time Sativaville can compete consistantly with the best the world has to offer.

:- Sativaville 2006-06-19

Well, to answer their question: 19 years later they would be introduced to an Idiot Project audience with the pretitle 'forgotten Qazox puppet'. In eleven attempts at qualifying for the World Cup, they will succeed zero times. In fact, no team in this Baptism of Fire would ever reach the finals. Few would even survive long enough to sign up for cycle 30.

When you talk about the Class of '29, you're not looking at the 20 newbies that entered the BoF. You're looking at the three that didn't.

Three teams that approached the international football with wildly different energies.

The Elven Marauders sign up for their first World Cup.

:- Elves Security Forces. 2006-05-17

Bostopia would like to enter it’s first World Cup. Bostopia would also like to enter the Baptism of Fire if at all possible.

:- Bostopia. 2006-06-05

and if i get in what happens, do i go to fireball thing or what?

:- Quakmybush. 2006-06-07

Elves Security Forces are punctual. Forthright. Giving nothing away, not at this stage. The copy of the roster we have access to shows them playing with a +1 modifier, but it looks like a system that underwent some experimentation during the group stage, as the side tries to find the optimum formula. Naturally, this isn’t their final form just yet.

Their first interactions with the wider football world gives a detailed analysis of their team, shows off a classic home kit that hasn’t needed an overhaul in the past few centuries, and uses bunny ears to throw some accidental shade on one of their group-mates.

Today the groups for World Cup 29 were drawn and the outlook for the Marauders looks neither bleak or optimistic. While Audioslavia is the "powerhouse" in the group, there are several other decent squads that will pose a challenge.

:- ESF, 2006-06-19

A few weeks after ESF sign up, a side called Bostopia does the same.

Also short and to the point, although they’re late for the Baptism of Fire, which is already underway. Bostopia believe they pose something of a threat to their qualifying group, but have less of an emphasis on strategy. Famously, they introduced their starting lineup to the world well before their opening game, not caring to obfuscate any deeper tactics. They didn’t have any.

“As you can see, we’re playing a 4-4-2, with Rob and Dave pushing down the flanks. Steven Serring will also be going forward in more of a free role, and John Willis will play a holding role. Ok, any questions? Yes, Greg!

[Griffis] Coach Ferring, don’t you think it’s a bit dangerous to tell the other team what four of your guys are doing?

[Ferring] Well Greg, first, it’s manager. And secondly, what else are right wingers who are known for their attacking ability going to do? We all know of Steven’s ability to attack, and anyway, we know what their goalkeepers doing and what their strikers will be doing. Think of it as a game of swapsies. Anyone else?”

:- Bostopia 2006-06-20

Quakmybush, meanwhile, posted about their desire for bounces.

This is Bob Weeks of the TSN soccer network. The qualifying groups for WC 29 have been announced and our countrymen from Quakmybush will be in tough.

The team will need a few bounces for any chance at all.

:- Quakmybush, 2006-06-20, 4pm.

Then they did so a second time, a few hours later.

This is Bob Weeks of the TSN soccer network. The qualifying groups for WC 29 have been announced and our countrymen from Quakmybush will be in tough.

The team will need a few bounces for any chance at all.

:- Quakmybush, 2006-06-20, 8pm.

This is a side which would play a formation with four strikers. A formation which they insisted required a Minus One defensive modifier.

Their kit, like that of Elves Security Forces, was made in Oliverry, but doesn’t quite have the same ‘instant classic’feel. For some reason, stylistically, teal sharkfins never really stood the test of the time.

The difference in how these teams approached international football led to differences in how they were treated by their respective group-mates. Naturally, none were predicted to qualify, but while the confident, measured Marauders were tipped to be a potential future threat, which in hindsight is a horrendous understatement, Quakmybush were derided immediately. Mis-spelled. Misapprehended. Misunderstood.

“it looks like Elves Security Forces could be a bit of a spoiler. They should definitly be competitive, matchday in, matchday out. Prediction: Fifth”

:- Becquerelia 2006-06-19

“Bostopia: another new nation, totally unranked and is not even really worth commenting on... easy wins.”

:- Bazalonia 2006-06-19

“QuakeMyBush is totally new to the World Cup scene. expect easy wins against all these nations that most likely don't even know what a football is.”

Atheistic Right, 2006-06-21

“Elves Security Forces] are either very brave or foolish to come into the World Cup with no experience. They may train but without the games, they may struggle to adapt for awhile.”

:- Cuation. 2006-06-22

“Quakmybush (unranked): One word sums this up quite well…Who??? Predicted Finish: 7th”

:- Praying2God, 2006-06-21

On the opening day of World Cup 29, all three of Bostopia, Elves Security Forces and Quakmybush would be given their hardest possible match: Their group’s top seed, away from home. For Bostopia, this meant a trip to Liverpool England, by this point two-time World Champions. ESF visited Audioslavia in a true baptism of fire: their opponents team who would go on to reach the final of this very World Cup. Quakmybush would go up against one of the less successful top-seeds, but a top seed nonetheless. A veteran of almost fifteen cycles.

Praying2God.

Two years on from the events of World Cup 11, Praying2God were at the end of a very long and arduous road from pre-jolt n00b to late twenties “powerhouse”. They’d left the football world shortly after World Cup 14 but rejoined a week later in World Cup 20, deciding to stick around properly. In World Cup 28. Praying2God had had their best ever cycle, taking the full nine points from the group stage and being unlucky to lose out in the last sixteen.

Nevertheless, World Cup 29 will bring their participation in international football to an abrupt end. Famously incapable of dealing with defeat while a newcomer, it should come as little surprise that they were even less equipped to face losing when burdened with the pressure of being the group’s top seeds.

The two years between World Cups 11 and 29 have apparently not calmed P2G’s bloodlust.

If you watch enough heist movies, you notice a pattern. If you sit with the protagonists while they talk about the big plan, then when you watch them execute the big plan, something will go wrong. If you instead listen to a voice-over from the protagonists about their plan, while watching a montage of the plan in motion, then it’ll go off without a hitch. There are similar patterns in Praying2God RPs. Even if you haven’t seen the Scores thread yet, you can still tell whether or not P2G are upset about having lost their game just from their RP. It’s subtle, but the clues are there. One thing to look out for, for example, is gunshot wounds appearing in young women.

A pair of unidentified gunmen somehow managed to elude the heavy security at the House of Prayer and get into the Warriors locker room just before they were to take the field for their WC XXIX opener against Quakmybush, taking the team hostage. The gunmen barracaded the doors, preventing both escape and rescue efforts.

Praying2God, 2006-06-22

The Praying2God FBI and stadium security tried to negotiate a peaceful surrender for five hours, while the rest of the stadium was oblivious to what was going on, except for the fact that a team of six-year-olds had to play for the Warriors.
Praying2God, 2006-06-22[/align]

When negotiations were cut off, the P2G FBI tried to come down through the ceiling to catch the gunmen off guard and prevent injury to the Warriors team or the staff. However, before both gunmen were gunned down, reserve midfielder Crystal Berry was shot.

She was rushed to a nearby hospital. The hospital and the P2GSA have refused to comment on the extent of her injuries. Once word leaked to the public, the fact that the Warriors were upset became unimportant, as it always does when things like this occur. It also made all too real the stories that the citizens of P2G have heard over the years about the team bus being attacked after their last match of their original WC Qualifying back in WC XI. The identities and nationalities of the gunmen have not been determined as of this time. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and teammates of Crystal Berry.”

:- Praying2God, June 22nd 2006

I have checked, and I do not believe Crystal Berry is the name of any real-world victim of a mass shooting. As it turns out, anyone named Crystal Berry became impossible to google after the popularisation of vaping.

EDIT: In the time between me writing the above line (January 2023) and going through the editing process (April 2025), someone named Crystal Berry has been involved in a mass shooting. Proof, if more were needed, never to underestimate Americans.

With one player shot and the rest kidnapped, it was up to Quakmybush to defeat Praying2God’s team of six-year olds, which they did by a single goal to nil.

“This is the TSN soccer network bringing the results of the first day of WC 29 qualifying. In one of the more shocking results of the day was in group 12 with top ranked (in the group) Praying2god losing to unranked Quakmybush. Cory Sorely scored a beutiful goal on a corner kick.”

:-Quakmybush, 2006-06-22

As you might expect after such a tragedy, there is an outpouring of sympathy for Praying2God from the wider NS Sport community.

MONASTIC FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION PRESS RELEASE
MFA Send Condolences to Praying2God
Holy Icon Blessed to Commemorate Occasion

That there has been long-standing rivalry between the Archregimancy and Praying2God, based on the latter nation's multiple heresies, is a matter of record. The Monastic Football Association would nonetheless like to send its condolences to Praying2God to mark the sad occasion of the kidnapping of the team, the shooting of Crystal Berry, and the slaughter of the 6 year olds by an unranked team on the field of play

:- The Archregimancy 22-06-2006

In other news, a tragedy has occurred in Praying2God where one player was shot and the Warriors held hostage while kids had to play in their place. We offer our condolences and best wishes for that squad in this time of trouble.

:- Andossa Se Mitrin Vega 22-06-2006

The Ministry of Morale, the Presse-Journal Devoir, and all Montréalais would like to express their deepest sympathies and condolence to the people of Praying2God and the families.

:- New Montreal States 22-06-2006

There follows a Party Political Broadcast on behalf of the Party Party...

"Hello, Mike Toby from the Party Party here to give another insight into how politics and football really shouldn't be mixed.

"Of course, the big news story at the moment is the taking of the entire Praying2God team as hostages and the shooting of player Crystal Berry.

"Let it be known that the Party Party's view on this kind of atrocity is probably the same as any other political party's, in that we condone such events

:- Schiavonia 22-06-2006

If the sympathies of the community help the team, it doesn’t show. In one of the weirdest qualifying groups of all time, top seeds Praying2God finish down in fifth.



It is the final straw.

WIPED OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH

The nations of Praying2God and Pastorville were both wiped off the face of the earth by an unknown nation who dropped a series of nuclear weapons on both nations, killing all residents of both nations. The motive for the attack is unknown. There are no survivors.

:-Praying2God 07-07-2006

It looks like an expulsion of toys from pram, but there is a storyline here. One that’s been set up by group-mates and natural thematic enemies Atheistic-Right. It’s the first act of a war that sees Atheistic-Right defeated by most of the region of Atlantian Oceania.

And I tell you what, if there’s one thing we can’t fault Praying2God on, it’s committing to the bit.



We will rejoin Quakmybush a little later. First, a final word on Praying2God.

If I could describe Praying2God’s ending in a word, and if I could describe their RP style in just one word, it would be this:

Lancrean.

[The Idiot Project]

3

The Regional Cup That Went Insane
Written: April 2025

These days, we have six active regional-level competitions. The Independent Associations Championship is one, and five different sporting regions hold their own. There’s the old guard of Rushmore and Esportiva, the relative newbies of Anaia and Arrosia and a persistent if attenuated Mandalanusa. Atlantian Oceania were, until recently, the longest running active regional, holding its most recent edition in 2021, having only missed a handful of cycles since their inception, 17 years prior.

If you’d asked me, last week, what the first Regional Cup was, I’d have said the AOCAF Cup. Middle of 2004. There aren’t many more candidates. Rushmore wasn’t founded until 2006 and didn’t host a tournament until 2010. The Heartland used to be considered a ‘sports’ region, but never managed to run one regional cup to the end. FIFA were another proto-sports region, but held only one regional cup, and did so in about 2006. The AOCAF Cup seems like the obvious answer.

Perusing through some threads from the early thirties, I noticed the AOCAF Cup held its 20th edition in summer 2007. Around the same time, the region of Lancre was holding its 17th and, so it turned out, final, edition.

I dug a little deeper to figure out which of these competitions was actually older.

The AOCAF Cup was inaugurated on June 8th 2004, The Lancre Cup held its first edition on June 24th.

June 24th 2003.

It pre-dates the Baptism of Fire. It pre-dates the Cup of Harmony. It pre-dates the use of seeded double round-robin qualifying for the World Cup. It pre-dates Audioslavian football. Its first edition was held during World Cup 3.

And this isn’t some Western-Isles style own-universe non-canon competition where the players know nothing of the NS World Cup. Steel Shadows participated in early Lancre Cups and had also done well enough in World Cup 3 to automatically qualify for World Cup 4. That’s how old the Lancre Cup is: When it was starting out, we were still letting the top six in the world rankings auto-qualify for the next cup.

Granted, experiencing success didn’t necessarily mean Steel Shadows even knew what football even was.

is this football or soccer..er..football?

Steel Butterfly, 2003-06-24. Lancre Cup thread.

We can learn almost nothing about the Lancre Cup from its thread in the archives. Gallingly, it appears all results and standings of the first handful of Lancre Cups were edited into the OP of the thread and, naturally, over-written whenever new results were generated.

We do, however, have their website, along with a very old wiki entry which tells us a few things about this ancient competition.

What we learn is this: The Lancre Cup, like the World Cup and all other tournaments in the very early stages of NS Sport, had some weird habits. Like the World Cup, it started life using dice. Like the World Cup, it took a few cycles for them to adopt a new system to separate the good teams from the bad. According to regional leader (and all-round Good Egg) Sirocco, it’s “too boring” to explain. Or, as they put it:

The way the scoring system (co-designed by Sirocco and Bellenia) works is complicated, as it was wanted for the scores to be as realistic as possible (though nations do frequently score upwards of four goals). An even more complicated system was devised so that nations that performed well in previous Cups would have an advantage in the next one. … This was devised by an ex-nation called Bellenia and it solved many problems - now not only would there be more consistency to results, it wouldn't be so strict that the best teams always won and the worst ones always lost - even the most abysmal of Lancre teams can make it through to the big time if they're lucky.

The details of this scoring is too boring to put here, but those interested are free to contact Sirocco or Dregruk for details.

:- Goobergunch.net article on The Lancre Cup

They aren’t around to be asked for details, but we did some digging.

Naturally, the problem they were posed with was the same the NS World Cup had to figure out. Some teams are better than others, but how much better? And better how? And how? The Lancrean solution promoted by Bellenia and Sirocco is simple. Perhaps too simple. It lacks that Progressan hyper-nerd influence.

How about something like:

if you were in the quarterfinals last time you get +1 to the goals rolled and the opposition gets -1 (cancelling if both were and not going below zero obviously)

if you were in the semis you get +2 and they get -1

if you were in the final you get +2 and they get -2

Or something - not sure if the figures make it too biased.

So if someone who was in the final plays someone in the semi and the score is 3 all under the current system it modifies to 4 - 3 in favour of the previous finalist. (finalist gets 3 + 2 -1 and semi-finalist gets 3 - 2 + 1).

May turn out too complicated…

:- Bellenia 2003-10-13

Hmm... so if you were in the final last time, you'd get at least two goals in your match?

:- Sirocco 2003-10-13

I guess so - do you think that makes it too unfair?
Actually they wouldn't automatically get at least 2 goals because if they were playing the other finalist the penalty would cancel the bonus.

:- Bellenia 2003-10-14

Bellenia, I like those ideas and I think I probably will incorporate that into Lancre Cup VI!

:- Sirocco 2003-10-17

Even more strangely, it appears the job of writing up what happened in each match was the job of the host, and not the contestants. The NS Sport community considered 2023’s ‘No-RP World Cup’ an abomination, but it turns out to have a precedent from the pre-YouTube era.

Results from early tournaments are hard to come by, but we can take the write-up of second Lancre Cup final as an example of what one could expect from a typical game in the tournament.

The second Lancre cup came to a conclusion this afternoon. The much awaited final between Lingfieldgamblers and Stuland got under way under the blazing sun just after 3pm. The kick-off was delayed due to some Lingfieldgambler supporters protesting over the furore between their nation and Sodarules which was reported here last week, but a football stadium is no place for protests and they were eventually calmed down and the game got under way. An un-enthralling first half finished with the game still goalless, but the second half started as if a rocket had gone off. Within three minutes of the restart Stuland were two goals up with two powerful headers, both coming from corners on the right. The game stayed that way until the last fifteen minutes. Lingfieldgamblers just weren't penetrating the Stuland defence in this final, but in the seventy-fifth minute Dyer was fouled 20 yards from the opposing goal. Up stepped Shearer, who had been having an anonymous game up till that point. The free-kick was hit sweetly and the Stuland goalkeeper was left stranded as the ball flew into the top left hand corner. With the bit now firmly between their teeth, Lingfieldgamblers pushed relentlessly towards the other goal. Their late efforts were rewarded with two minutes remaining when an amazing Bellamy run into the box saw him poke the ball under the keeper to make it all even.
At that, it looked as if we were heading into extra-time, but two minutes into injury time Lingfieldgamblers won a corner. It was taken by Dyer and to the agony of the Stuland goalkeeper the ball swirled in the air and came in at the near post before hitting off the crossbar and crossing the line. The final whistle was blown just after the game kicked off leaving Stuland no time to reply. So jubilation in the land of Lingfieldgamblers and dejection for Stuland.

LINGFIELD LINE-UP; Given, Dyer, Bernard, Jenas, Hughes, Bowyer, Woodgate, Bellamy, Bramble, Shearer, Vianna

:- Sirocco. 2003-07-20

By multiversal standards, it’s a reasonably straightforward game. Sure, the winner was a last-minute olimpico and one team had the disadvantage not only of needing to come back from two goals down but having to do so with the 02/03 season Newcastle United first XI, but it’s at least identifiably a football score and the football looks like the sort of footbally football you’d get in a football match.

Compare and contrast with this quarter-final match from Lancre Cup 12, three years later.

Tonca vs GROEGER vs LostLotheria

The fourth game, a product of the [host’s] lack of previous experience at planning anything other then their own breakfast, was scheduled to be played across town at the Center Town Park. The park had the only patch of grass big enough for the misshapen monstrosity of the three way field and its stands.

Surprisingly, this game was one of the hardest tickets in town to get. Everyone wanted to be there, just to say they had been there at the only (hopefully) three way soccer game ever played. Well, everyone wanted to be there but the referees, who were steadfastly refusing to consider the idea.

The teams seemed to love the idea. There were secret meetings about alliances. There were even more secret meeting about breaking alliances. There were top secret meetings about how the coin toss was going to work at the beginning (three to one betting on a special three sided coin). But, finally, it was time to play.

Tonca and LostLotheria started out working together. Tonca would distract GROEGER while LostLotheria would score, and then the other was around. This seemed a highly effective way to play, but it was too good to last.

After the half, LostLotheria came out supporting GROEGER. The Tonca captain screamed "TRAITERS!" The Crowds heads whipped, wimbledon like, to the LostLotheria Captain, who yelled "EX-delegate!" It was generally agreed to be a good, but not great insult, but LostLotheria won, so it was excused.

Tonca 4, GROEGER 3, LostLotheria 7

Yesnono. 2005-10-11

Followers of World Cup Scorigami would be shocked enough by the fact that the tournament winner, Sirocco, managed 8-5, 9-5 and 8-7 wins in the quarters, semis and final of the tournament. I don’t think anyone could handle the prospect of having to add a whole new dimension to The Scorigami Chart to accommodate a 7-4-3 win.

What if we had to make the scorigami chart 3D?

For citizens of Lancre, this brand of psychedelic football had become the norm. What held their mouths agog in the 12th edition of their tournament was not the scoring, or even the triangle match, but the controversy surrounding the game between Sunstate and Bongostan.

As the Sunstate team took the field there were vast mutterings in the stadium. "Why do they have a penguin playing for them?"
"It must be their national critter…"
"Their national critter? But it's our national critter! CRITTER THIEVES!!"
Eventuality settled down and decided unanimously to root for the "cute little penguin" playing.

Which made the ending that much more tragic.

It was 0-0 late in the game , Sunstate was pressing hard when a Bongostan player attempted to steal the ball from the penguin.

He managed to steal both the ball and the penguin.

The ref later explained, "Look, two roll-y black and white thingies go into the goal, two goals. That's how it works."

LCOC(Y) fired the refs immediately. The Yesnono Parliament is currently considering getting an army, so it can consider a war against Bongostan "to teach them not to mess with penguins."

Sunstate 0, Bongostan 2

:-Yesnono 2005-09-26

So what was the controversy? The declaration of all-out war? No. The referee awarding goals punitively? The fact that the ref apparently didn’t know the word ‘goal’ and had to improvise with a whole sentence? No.

One matchday later:

Bongostan vs. Sliponia

"Penguin Kickers!" jeered part of the crowd.
"Yeah you cruelty to animal people… um, meanies!" tried a lone voice from the crowd.
"Hey, you suck at jeering!" they responded. As the crowd continued yelling at the crowd, the game began almost unnoticed.

Bongostan started out well, outscoring Sliponia 3-2 in the first half, but the constant animosity of the crowd was wearing them down. After the half, the Bongostan player who had scored in the first round attempted to explain himself to the unruly mob.

"Look… I didn't mean to kick him. It's not like he got very hurt… I was going for the ball. As for dribbling him down the field, well, he's black and white, and the little guy doesn't weight much, so I didn't notice."

"Inattentive critter kicker!" came from the stands, sparking an "ARGGGggg" from the player as he ran off the field headed for Bongostan.

We learned just before printing that he was arrested at the Yesnono boarder for failure to have identification other then his jersey.

Bongostan 3, Sliponia 6

:-Yesnono 2005-10-5

A natural cause of this athlete-on-penguin violence happened in edition fourteen, with the signing up of a team of furious, murderous and often downright rude penguins. At least, some of them were penguins. Some of them were horrors that would struggle to be classified as ‘eldritch’. Others would fail even to be considered euclidean.

Raging Penguins Team Roster:

Breif Bio's of the Wierd, Inept and Insane team:

ABSOLUT LUNATIC - Escaped from the Raging Penguin Asylum for the Dangerously Disturbed, and the Asylum refused to let him back in, so he was naturally placed in the football team. He regularly drinks a mixture of vodka, crude oil, and tar.

Furious Porridge - Probably the most mentally-stable, normal person on the team, Furious Porridge is an excellent Football player, and thus recieves the lowest paycheck.

The Penguin: Not a penguin at all, The Penguin is a mentally unstable, human ex-marine, who left the Rage-Peng Army Vet Center and joined the team. He stole the team mascot's costume, which he wears at all times. He even puts his jersey on over it. The captain of the team, The Penguin often orders bayonet charges, and as such, the entire team carries spears, rifles, or extendable poles on their persons during and in between matches.

DMYS - Dubious Mobile Yellow Slime(DMYS for short) is an extremely mobile, somewhat intelligent slime mold, mutated by extremely common chemical spills, and uranium feul rods carelessly discarded in the nearest swamp. Stretched out, DMYS can form a two foot high wall from one side of the pitch to the other(the width, not the length of the pitch). Originally chosen as the Goalkeeper, DMYS has instead been moved to Defencive position due to its ability to make opponants trip, slip, and lose the ball(or their legs).

Arnold Flitchy - Arnold Flitchy is a long-standing member of the team. Having originally been the Mascot, his Costume was stolen by The Penguin, and Arnold was replaced as Mascot by seven real Raging Penguins. His contract to the team, however, was still in effect, and he was givin the choice of becoming a player or a ball, and has been playing ever since.

The CHAMPION!!!!! - The CHAMPION!!!!! is an over-wieght man who joined the team to be a “Blocker”. After signing the contract, he found out that Football in Raging Penguins was not played with an oblong ball, and that you did not tackle your opponents. Much to his chagrin, he realized too late that it was a round ball that was being played with and that you shot, stabbed, and strangled your opponants. He still, however, is used as a blocker by other players. His real name is unkown, as he insists upon being called "The CHAMPION!!!!!".

Fnab-Fnab - Fnab-Fnab was once the Iron-Fisted, Tyrannical Dictator of a small, smelly, and utterly foriegn country. After a week of vacation in Raging Penguins, he boarded a small private jet which was supposed to send him home. However, it was not his small, private jet, but was instead the Football team’s jet, and Fnab-Fnab has been with the team ever since.

Mrs. Tweezly - After living most of her adult life as a School teacher in a Middle School, Mrs. Tweezly retired - and joined the Football team. She is one of the more tempermental members of the team, and will go berserk at the thought of students chewing gum during a game. A formidable sight on the field, Mrs. Tweezly has a meter-stick in her right hand at all times, and is armed with an extremely severe Look, which can strike an organism down at twelve paces.

Mostly Mouths - Mostly Mouths, or MM, as he is known, is a product of the over-breeding of large-mouthed Troglodytes, a commercial race living in the mountains of Raging Penguins. Mostly Mouths is an inatriculate Mouth on short, stumpy legs. He has two eyes, although nobody knows where they are, no ears, no nose, no arms, no vital organs, and like most Troglodytes, no brain. He does have an enourmous mouth, however, and eats almost every football kicked towars him.

Derek Snaddly - Derek Snaddly is a door-to-door salesman; cunning, dangerous, and not to be trifled with. He plays Football for the team as well.

Willie Dee and his Extremely Dangerous Hair - Willie Dee was once a regular boy, playing football on weekends with his mates. Then, one fateful day, he applied a radioactive hair-gel to maintain his large afro, and overnight, it gained a violent and carnivorous mind of its own. Utterly immune to scissors, fire, or hats, his hair has stayed put, and has grown. Currently, his Hair is out of jail on bail, after being jailed-along with the innocent Willie Dee- on charges of Assault and Battery, resisting arrest, and devouring a policeman. The no verdict has been issued, as the bodies have not been recovered yet. His Extremely Dangerous Hair was hired to play as Goalie, due to its agility, and ability to deflect - or devour - incoming balls. Willie Dee just happened to come with the deal.

:- Raging Penguins. 2006-01-06

A door-to-door salesman turning out for a professional international football team? Well now you’re just being silly.

Raging Penguin’s use of a Slime Mould may be inspired by region-mates Dregruk, whose team were nicknamed ‘The Slimy Things’ and whose players were… well… slimy… things. Oh, except for the walking heavy battle tank, which was called George.

Dregruk -
Anyway. Our team this year will feature the recently developed, "Slimy Stabby Thiing #19" as well as an updated George (this Cup sporting a rather magnificent hat and heavy machine-gun). Also, we refuse to respond to claims that we've been setting up artillery on the roof of the Dregruk embassy in Yesnono that have been loaded with footballs... And, yes, it IS "Slimy Stabby Thiing" with two i's in "thiing". It reflects upon its impressive nature.

Raging Penguins -
Whomever plays the Raging Penguins Team, Please, PLEASE find a way to kill them all. They are a major drain on the federal budget, and our team is also the reason our armies' technology dates back to neolithic eras untouched by archaeologists...
But be careful of the goal keeper, or rather, be careful of his hair, it Bites, and is currently out on bail after devouring a policeman, and several unlucky hobos...

:- Yesnono

Raging Penguins’s first foray into Lancre Cup football would be less than fruitful. Their first-round 5-1 loss to Crista West coming due to being somewhat short-handed for their game.

Raging Penguins vs. Crista West

Crista West had a grand plan to reach the second round. It was grand because of it's simplicity. They called the Yesnono City police, and asked them to watch the Raging Penguins team practice. The Police were hesitant to get involved in the Cup, but once they recognized the one called "ABSOLUT LUNATIC" (striker) as the perpetrator of a raid on a bar / mechanic's shop they checked the rest against the most wanted list.

Raging Penguins ended up fielding a team of three; the two innocent players Furious Porridge, Arnold Flitchy, and the Slime Mold, which hadn't fit into the handcuffs. The rest were handed over to the Raging Penguins' Ambassador, who tried to refuse to take them.

Raging Penguins 1, Crista West 5

:- Yesnono

In edition 15, they actually managed a win, defeating former Lancre Cup champions and World Cup mainstays Sliponia in their first game.

Sliponia vs. Raging Penguins
Willy Dee and his Extremely Dangerous Hair strangled anyone who came close to the goal, including his own teammates. After he killed about five people on each side, he took the ball and sat in the opposing goal until the match was over.
Raging Penguins 1, Sliponia 0

:- Anyland 2006-05-23

Encouraged, they made the decision to take their violence global. How did they announce their intention to sign up for the World Cup? On their sign-up thread? No. They used their blog. Their RL-states blog.

No, really

-Bloco'yce City

The Team, our nations collection of criminals, lunatics and unwanted people, has entered into the World Cup. While it is not as violent as The Lancre Cup, it is held in countries far away from ours, and if possible, The Team may just end up without tickets home. They are up against formidable foes: Rejistania, Spaam, Ariddia, as well as some others we've never heard of, but will probably lose to anyway. After the expulsion(and imprisonment) of Midfielder Derrick Snaddley, and the tragic loss of The CHAMPION!!!! in a suspicious case of cyanide poisoning, The Team is even less coordinated than usual.

However, as the players luggage was being passed through airport security, it appeared that The Team has not lost its homicidal touch. Items confiscated from one bag alone - Defense player Fnab Fnab's - were listed as:
1 small box of grenades,
3 small revolvers
1 EZ-Boom™ inflatable stealth bomber(Model 12)
19 land mines
1 issue of a trashy teen magazine

The Team is still trying to adjust to the rules which state that: You cannot bring howitzers onto the pitch, nor may your use aerial bombing to defeat the opposition. However, as The Team had managed to score 1 point against the entire Cristia West Team with only three players, they may not lose too badly. We trust that by the time they actually arrive at their destination, somebody will have discovered the large arsenal of weapons hidden inside Mostly Mouths' enormous jowels.

- Terra Phirma, Sports correspondentt. Raging Penguins.

They found their opening forays in the tournament tough going.

The Team Loses as expected, But still Nobody dead

-The Team opened up their first World Cup with a rather spectacular loss, which was the result of a long game which displayed excellent teamwork(by The Emperialist team) and several stunning plays. As the Emperialist players swiftly worked their way towards the goal, the ball was almost always stolen by either DMYS, or Mostly Mouths(who is being fined nearly 500 Curses for damages - namely: seven footballs within the first half, and five more the second), and being sent up to Furious Porridge. Porridge consistently maneuvered the ball to the enemy goal, where ABSOLUT LUNATIC consistently wandered in front of the shot just as it soared towards an open space.

The Emperialist players finally got past the voracious defense-players and scored, causing Devious Penguin to fly into one of the infamous 'Penguin Rages' which gave them their name. He was brought down by tranquilizer dart just inches from one of Emperialist' star forwards, and was carted off the field in 4-inch chains(a bit thinner than regulation size, but the penguin didn't wake up for another half-hour).

]:-Raging Penguins 2006-04-29

The World Cup is something that you can grow into, especially if you are a slime mould, and after only two points from their first six games (admittedly against Spaam and Rejistania, both 0-0) they finally scored a goal and won a game.

Memo From: Ronald E. Perf, Head of the Dept. of Outragious Taxation and Financial Debt
To: John Rashtart, Head of the Dept. of Criminal Management
Subject: The Team wins?

I saw an article in the National Informant today, which claimed that The Team, that expensive group of crimes against humanity, had beaten the team from The Emperialist.

Who the Hell let them win? You know what victory on their part will mean for my department: Loss of Happy Hour Money! Your department is in charge of those creeps, and you assured me that they would not wina single game in this entire World Cup. You guarenteed that they'd lose - in fact, you wasted an hour of my time describing why they would lose, and how your department had set that up!
And now they Win?!
I want to know who was in charge of that little blunder, I want to know who he is, and what his position is. And then I want him fired and Blcaklisted. Understand?
Our treasury cannot afford to spend any more money on The Team, and if we get another request saying that "MM ate all of our equipment, buy us more', I will see to it that you get lower wages.
If The Team wins again, whey'll probably do it by blowing the other team up, and that would mean war, something we can't afford.

Sincerely,
Ronald E. Perf,
Head of The Department of Outragious Taxation and Financial Debt

:- Raging Penguins 2006-6-5

Scoring a goal and grabbing a win turns out to be a complete disaster for the nation. As it turns out, the better the team do, the more embarrassed the nation is over just how violent and murderous their players are. As such, by World Cup 31, the nation has completely severed ties with the team. They are not to be known as ‘Raging Penguins’, only as ‘The Team’.

We repeat, The Team should never be represented by Raging Penguins, or vice-versa. The Not-So-Grand Dutchy of Raging Penguins has cut all and any ties with The Team, in an effort to avoid war with any and all national teams The Team may play/kill.

:- Raging Penguins 2006-10-18

So it’s a disaster when they start actually winning football games. Not just beating them with their fists and truncheons and flippers, but beating them at the game of football as well.

And it’s doubly a disaster when they win enough games to qualify for the World Cup.

The Bloco'yce Courier

Oh, Shit.

[This edition of The Bloco'yce Courier was not printed with any articles, due to the massive rioting that resulted in the destruction of the Courier's presses. We apologise for the inconvenience.]

:- Raging Penguins 2006-11-06

[Fr: The Raging Penguins Emergency Commitee for Crowd and Foreigner Control
[To: The World Cup 31 ViLC Organizing Commitee
[Subj: The Team

To whomever your head chappie is, or whomever it is who may be concerned. Due to a most unfortunate calamity, The Team will not be competing in your most well hosted tournament-playoff-contest-thingy. Earlier today, during the wee hours of the morning, while The Team was just only waking(with the exception of Deadly Penguin, who insists upon waking at five in the morning to execise his "Peng-Chi" whatever that may be a euphemism for), a freak accident occured.

Namely, a Freak Carpet-Bombing-Followed-By-Tactical-Nukes-Napalm-And-Genetically-Modified-Ninjas Accident.

This is the third time in Raging Penguins' long history of unfortunate accidents that this type has occured, only this time there was higher grade napalm and more ninjas. We offer our condolences to all the teams which have been humiliated, mutilated, and otherwise bothered by The Team during that grueling qualification process, and extend our heartfelt congratulations to the Snarks, or whatever they're called, from Quakmybush, on what we have come to understand is their right to qualification.

Again, we apologize for the inconvenience, the hassle this will undoubtably cause, the paperwork, and the waves of deadly nuclear radiation from the tactical nukes.

Sincerely,
Mr. Edward Crabbly,
President of The Raging Penguins Emergency Commitee for Crowd and Foreigner Control

:- Raging Penguins 2006-11-07

Raging Penguins had qualified for World Cup 31 but, as is their right, The Team decided to withdraw from the competition.

The final Lancre Cup, held in 2007, was the competition’s second and final reboot. The competition was aborted after the second ‘heat’. Bewilderingly, the Lancre Cup insisted on using ‘heat’ instead of ‘group’ from its first to its final incarnation.

The final matchday of the tournament includes Austria Prussia murdering their opponents’ entire team before kickoff, and then being thoroughly outplayed by their opponents’ backup team, only going into half-time 2-0 up due to a forcefield protecting their goal. The side then forgot they were changing ends at half-time, surrendering the forcefield to their opponents, and desperately clung on for a 2-1 win. Elsewhere, Degruk’s slimy things defeated Bla Alb 3-0, a win so captivating that the players of their puppet nation, Degruk Empire, forgot to turn up for their own match. Opponents RI had trouble remembering which goal was theirs, what with the lack of an opponent, but still won 3-2. In the final game of the match day, Tonca defeated Hutties by keeping their predatory flying machines busy. How? Unleashing a litter of tiny, cute, but apparently delicious kittens, and scoring while they were distracted by the sudden appearance of snacks.

So long, Lancre, and may god have mercy on your souls.

[The Idiot Project]

4

The Dawn of Quak
Written: January 2023, April 2025

Quakmybush qualified outright for World Cup 29, helped by the unravelling of Praying2God and the surprise domination of the group by McPsychoville. This is just the eighth time that a newcomer has made a KPB-era World Cup at their first attempt, or just the third time if you don’t want to include the slightly weird World Cup 24.

It’s a performance that puts Quakmybush among a group of just twenty-nine teams to have qualified despite attaining only 1.5 Points Per Game or fewer. It's a rare feat. The previous time a team had done that was three cycles earlier, when a team qualified for World Cup 26 on a 5-3-4 record.

That team was, er Praying2God. For further context, only one team has managed to qualify for the World Cup on 1.5 Points Per Game in the entire post-Jolt era. Pridenstrovia in World Cup 75. Three thousand, seven hundred and five teams in history have attained more than 1.5 Points Per Game in a qualifying campaign without actually qualifying.

Quakmybush were lucky, certainly, but this is a capable team. The talismanic John Fields is an ever-present in the middle, alongside Cory Sorley, while the exploits of goalkeeper Cam Carroll may be what keeps the side in the hunt for qualification throughout their debut cycles.

The Quakmybush national soccer team played another qualifying round game today, and suffered a 1-0 loss to Mcpsychoville, not a surprise by any means. The real surprise was Quakmybush's goaltender Cam Carroll. He played amazing, stopping 15 shots, including a penalty.

:- Quakmybush 2006-06-24

Cam Carroll continued his spectacular goaltending with another penalty save.

:- Quakmybush 2006-06-25

Cam Carroll played another stellar game in net saving the game fro Quakmybush in the 90th minute.

:- Quakmybush 2006-06-26

Quakmybush's goal scorer was Cory Sorley in the 89th minute, but it was too little too late. Cam Carroll played well in net again. The team still remains in second of their qualifying group.

:- Quakmybush 2006-06-27

This is Vic Rauter from the TSN soccer network, bringing you the results of the Quakmybush - Athestic Right World Cup 29 qualifying match. The national team came out and played very well in the 1st half having 81% possession. However, they only managed one real quality shot on the Athestic Right keeper. The team kept their momentum in the second half. Andrew Plett scored 1 minute and 45 seconds into the second half. The team then continued to keep the ball away from their opponents. Cam Carroll made a beutiful save in extra time to keep the team in the lead. The team now sits 3rd in their group tied with Tylenia, but losing on goal differencial. Tommorrow the squad faces undefeated Mcpsychoville in a very important match. Last time the team faced Mcpsychoville the result was a 1-0 loss. The team played well but couldnt find the net. The team will have to play high pressure offence to keep the game close.

ooc: this is like my best RP

:- Quakmybush, 2006-07-01

Together, these players will form the spine of this team for over ten tournaments, dragging their nation towards the Last 32 at almost every opportunity. They would prove World Cup 29 was no fluke by putting together an eight-game unbeaten run in World Cup 30 qualifying, rounding out the campaign with a 5-0 demolition of Demot to make it two qualifications from two attempts.

The side would have one more shock in store.

Tv Reporter:The Quakmybush Sharks started their World Cup 30 Group Stage play yesterday with a shocking 1-0 win over World number 3 seed and, last World Cup champions Casari. The teams played very evenily in the first half with a 54 to 46 possession to Casari. Then in the second half the game was very back and forth, and finally in the 76th minute the Sharks scored *goes to clip* "Fields comes down the left side, he passes of the Sorley, and back to Fields and a shot..... ET LA BUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The Sharks have a one to nil lead." The Sharks managed to hold on for the one-nil win and now sit atop their qualifying group which shocks many people. For QSN im Harry Horton.

:- Quakmybush 2006-09-13

A heavy matchday three defeat would see Quakmybush eliminated on goal difference. Even more cruelly, the twenty-five exclamation marks after et la but (‘but’ is ‘goal’ in French, if you’re confused) in the above RP are only good enough for the second most exclamation-marked phrase of that cup’s RP thread, one behind Milchama

2-1 Milchama!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Marin Keffer has scored what looks to be the winning goal in the 80th minute to give the Warriors the lead.

:- Milchama 2006-08-20

and three ahead of Milchama

These guys are ranked 129 in the world, 129!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is just pathetic that we are not blowing teams like this out of the water.

:- Milchama 2006-08-22

Quakmybush, like Raging Penguins and Praying2God, are somewhat Lancrean in their RP style. It’s the old-school approach. Good old pre-2008 Standard Definition RPing. Sit. Spend anywhere between four and four and a half minutes writing whatever is on your mind. Do not check your work. Do not even hit ‘backspace’. Mash and mash and hit ‘send’. If you read any text coming out of Audioslavia between 2003 and 2006, it’s probably in this style.

Looking back twenty years later, it’s this style of RP that I find the most captivating. The more stream-of-consciousness the RP, the clearer the mirror into the mind of the writer, and the clearer the reflection of the time they’re in. As a personal example, the likelihood of a random Audioslavian match report from the time containing sexist, homophobic or ableist language is very much not zero. Audioslavians were not, as a rule, any of those things. This is either a reflection of the fact that 2004’s definition of acceptable language was very much different to the modern era or, equally likely, that I'm just less of a dick now than I was 20 years ago, and that the line has never moved. Either way, the fact that I wrote like that says something about me and something about the time I wrote in that a less haphazard RP might not.

Aside from the occasional ribald reference to the salacious private lives of a few of the players, there’s no such problematic language coming from Quakmybush. 2006 Quakmybush is a much more refined taste than 2006 Audioslavia. Here’s a small sample from one RP. Just look at the richness of this bouquet:

Chris Bircking didnt get much credit, he was a reserve on the Quakmybush National Soccer Team. He was doing some door-to-door sales work for the team, he had picked it out of hat.

:- Quakmybush 24-10-2006

What a vibrant, chaotic world this simple sentence creates. And yes, we do rather have to go back and apologise to Raging Penguins: Players from a professional international football team being pressed into occasional door-to-door sales work is not as unprecedented as we might have thought. Rather beautifully, Quakmybush appears to decide which of its footballers to press into impersonating an Avon-lady via random numbers. What are they selling? "Stuff to support the Quakmybush Soccer Team" is the only answer given. What on earth does that mean? Shirts? Flags? Those enormous foam hands with fingers pointing up? I love that it’s never specified.

Chris Bircking’s story involves some bawdy romping with ‘birds’, some locker-room bragging, and something that appears at first to be a sexually transmitted disease but is, instead, food poisoning.

"I have some bad news, and some worse news." The doctor said

"Well.... tell me the bad news first." Chris said.

"You have 24 hours to live." the doctor said.

"Oh My God, what could be worse than that." Chris replied.

"Well, i tried to reach you yesterday." the doctor said. A look of sheer terror came over Chris' face.

:-Quakmybush 2006-10-27

Objectively funny.

"That's horrible I'm going to die soon." Chris said. The doctor then burst out in laughter. "What the fuck is so funny about me dying?!" he yelled at the doctor.

"Bahahha, it was only a joke, the other doctor's each paid me 75 Hubes to do that" the doctor said.

:-Quakmybush 2006-10-27

As I said earlier, this type of RP is a reflection of the times. In May 2006, an RL-states football team famously lost a big game due to a bout of food-poisoning, on that occasion scoffing some apparently tainted lasagnas. Quakmybush are the fifth nation to have a player come down with food poisoning in as many months, after The Archregimancy (the first, a week after the RL-states incident) Spaam, Ac-cz and Bettia. In the previous eighteen months of international football, there had only been one reference to food poisoning. If a team hasn't been mass-poisoned on the eve of a game in RL states recently, then the average RPer is unlikely to come up with the concept themselves unless they were really, really keen to explain away a loss without implying their team is less than perfect.

6-YEAR-OLD WARRIORS UPSET IN FINAL MINUTE BY SOUTH OSETTIAN REFEREE
Foul play suspected in food poisoning of regular national team

A team of 6-year-olds came within a tenth of a second of doing what no Praying2God national team has done before...earn a point in a match refereed by a South Osettian. However, it is suspected that the South Osettian referee waited .11 of a second too long to blow the whistle to end the match. The 6-year-olds played admirably against 201st ranked Popolus, taking an early 1-0 lead and keeping the match even at one from the 66th minute until the controversial goal at the end of the match. The 6-year-olds were playing because a case of food poisoning struck down the whole national team, including its coaching staff. Praying2God authorities are looking into the suspicious situation to determine possible suspects. It is believed to be the work of somebody from a nation that does not want to see the Warriors qualify, and costing them the easy three points in this match was a golden opportunity for them. The South Osettian referee wasn't so fortunate, as he was arrested upon leaving the stadium and taken to an undisclosed location. We have no word on his current status. We will pass along more information as we get it.

:- Praying2God 2006-03-09

And yes, they used ‘we were represented by a team of six year-olds’ twice. This is just something Praying2God did. As if it wasn’t bad enough to go ‘oh you played Under Sevens team’, they went there twice. It’s not the only inexplicable well they revisited.

Praying2God's match against the nation of Beestings was decided before the opening whistle when six of Praying2God's starters were given red cards for "uniform violations."

:- Praying2God - 2004-01-09. World Cup 11 RP Thread

The Warriors had to play short-handed 9 on 11 the whole match because the referees told the starters they couldn't play because of uniform inconsistancies when they were all wearing the same uniform in the same style. However, the refs were generous enough to allow the subs to play, but at the same time they ruled that the starters could not go back into the locker room and change their uniforms to match the style the subs were wearing theirs' in (which was the same style in the first place)

:- Praying2God - 2004-02-19. World Cup 12 RP Thread.

Quakmybush aren’t the type for excuses. This is a team that is well aware they’ve been flying close to the sun. Having qualified outright for World Cups 29 and 30, their luck appears to desert them in World Cup 31. Going into the final matchday, they are level on points with the team in third place, they are level on Goal Difference with the team in third place, but they are stuck behind them on Head to Head record. To make matters worse, while their rivals have to play mid-table Spindonia, Quakmybush must go one on one with the great ones. The World Number Ones. Starblaydia.

The team needed to win, and by a lot for any chance of qualification. The game started off bad for the Sharks with Lawrence Asante putting a shot in the top corner on Cam Carroll. It looked bleak, very bleak. The team still played well, going into the break only down by one. Then early in the second half Jon Fields put one behind Paola Mendez. Xed City Stadium erupted, the Sharks had scored, and had received some much needed momentum. Five minutes later Cory Sorley put in another. The stadium was going nuts. The team was up on World Number One Starblaydia. The noise must have gotten to the Starblaydis as they could never hear orders from anywhere. This caused John Fields to steal the ball and go in on the keeper alone. Fields placed his shot perfectly and made it 3-1 Quakmybush.

:- Quakmybush 2007-11-08

Elsewhere, Spindonia had taken a 1-0 lead halfway through the second half. It was surely over? There would need to be a three goal swing to prevent the Sharks from qualifying. In fact, make that a four-goal swing.

Fields received a beautiful cross from Sorley and he headed it in to make it 4-1 Quakmybush. Needless to say the stadium erupted with noise. Most fans thought the Sharks had done it. The team went back to the locker room only to see…

:- Quakmybush 2007-11-08

…only to see that their rivals for third place had equalised. And had taken the lead. And had gone 3-1 up, and then 4-1 up.

The team was heartbroken.
"You know, this is probably the worst feeling I have ever had in my life." Jon Fields said. "It's just horrible." he added. He then started to sob and left.

:- Quakmybush 2007-11-08

Level on points, level on goal difference, behind on Head to Head. If only they’d beaten their rivals when they had the chance.

I started my first ever game of the World Cup qualifiers yesterday, it made some of the vetrans kinda mad, but whatever. It was awsome in the first half I rang a shot of the crossbar, it was so close, but so far. Those penguins were really scary, they were big, and ugly looking, and they had weapons. The one penguin had a grenade that he threw into a corner, and it made a huge crater. And then in the second half he through the grenade again, and it scared me so bad that I kicked the ball into my own net.... the teams was kinda angry, and I understand why, so if I'm not killed by tomorrow, I'll try and write again

Love,Matt

:-Quakmybush 2007-10-22

Quakmybush’s luck hadn’t run out. Murderous refuseniks Raging Penguins were the team ahead. They duly recused themselves from their automatic qualification spot. Quakmybush would qualify after all.

The next morning the mood was a bit better as the team knew they had World Cup 32 to look forward to. "Ya, it sucks, but hey we are all still alive aren’t we?" Cory Sorley said. At about 12:30 in the afternoon the team received some news. This news was horrifying, but good. The whole team of the Raging Penguins, except for Deadly Penguin were killed in a Freak Carpet-Bombing-Followed-By-Tactical-Nukes-Napalm-And-Genetically-Modified-Ninjas Accident. The team was now in the World Cup. Most of the players didn’t know how to feel. It was good that they were in the World Cup, but bad because they were only in because most of a team had lost there lives. "Wow, this is a surprise, first of all condolences to the families of those hurt by this freak accident. Second of all let's go out and win some games." Coach Greg Hughes said. In honour of the fallen penguins, the team will wear these special patches on their jerseys for all World Cup 31 Finals games.

:- Quakmybush 2007-11-08

In a rare success for 20 year-old JPEGs, the image for this specially created patch has survived

Quakmybush were eliminated in the first round, but would qualify again in cycle 32, making the knockouts for the first time.

Having started as a joke, Quakmybush had qualified in each of their first four attempts. Their newfound respectability would be rewarded. Following a successful host vote, World Cup 33 would be held in Quakmybush. The greatest tournament in world sport would be played at famous stadia such as Xed City Stadium, Jinkton City Field and The Ruckus Room.

In cycle 33, Quakmybush is where the party is. Qualifying will see the whole multiverse scrambles to get themselves an invite.

Among the teams vying for a place in Quakmybush is a side that, at this point, have spent their entire footballing history in the middle reaches of the rankings. Despite having started their international football journey at the same time as Quakmybush, they are without a single qualification to their name. They are ordinary. Luckless. Middle-of-the-road.

They are some team called

*checks notes*

Elves Security Forces.

[The Idiot Project]

Working title: A Night of the Empire

5

The Empire’s State-Building
Written: January 2023

Let’s go back to World Cup 29 Matchday 1. We know Quakmybush overcome Praying2God’s Under Sixes, but what’s happening elsewhere? It isn’t the only game we’re covering today. Five minutes gone, and here come the Bostopians.

“He kicks the ball out upfield, and it’s chested down by Serring. Serring plays the ball right to Reppon…who charges down the right flank, he’s got past McCray, and Houser’s coming out toward Reppon! Oh Reppon with a wonderful jink past Houser there, he’s into the area with a cross looking for Trent on the penalty spooooooooooooooooooot! IT’S IN! TRENT WITH A WONDERFUL HEADER INTO THE TOP LEFT CORNER! BOSTOPIA GO ONE NIL UP IN THE 5TH MINUTE!”

:- Bostopia, 2006-06-21

And there’s this team called Elves Security Forces who, it turns out, play football quite well.

Here we are 11 minutes in.

Here is Stone coming down the left side. Oh look at that move she put on Alavarez, I've never seen her pull that off before. Collins is making a run into the penalty area and Stone puts it right on his feet just outside Scuro's reach. Here comes Petäjä trying to close him down, and he gets the ball to Zacharius, GOALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!
Did you see that shot?! Perfect placement, bottom right corner. I've said it before and I'll say it again, placement over power gets it done.

:- Elves Security Forces, 2006-06-21

…and sixteen minutes in.

The Marauders supporters are just settling down. They seemed to get a large contingent over despite the distance. Here come Cuellar down the middle, Manderine springing him. He dribbles past Rachmaninoff and Donovan, Night is making her run, and Cuellar lobs it into the penalty area. Night chests it down, Yngve is charging at her. GOALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!! Right over the outstreched hands. What class by the spunky little lady.

:- Elves Security Forces, 2006-06-21

The mania doesn’t last for Elves Security Forces. Though 2-1 up at the break, the Bulls of Audioslavia would find it within themselves to come back to snatch all three points for themselves.. Bostopia, too, would be pegged back to 1-1 and 2-1 by Liverpool England. The 90 minute mark would come and go with their experienced opponents firmly in control.

And yet…

…and it’s cleared behind for a Bostopian corner!
There’s Dave Kripp, the goalie! Even he’s coming up, Bostopia have nothing to loose now, they’re throwing everyone up!
Steven Serring to take the corner for Bostopia on the left hand side. The home fans are doing everything to put him off! Serring delivers the ball into the area, it’s met by Dave KRIPPPPPPPPP! Straight at Carrero but he can’t hold onto it, and it’s fell to the feet of Jamie TREEEEEEEEEEEEEEENT! IT’S IN! BOSTOPIA TWO LIVERPOOL ENGLAND TWO! THEY’VE DONE IT! IN THE THE DYING MOMENTS!
You don’t care how an equaliser this late comes, it was nearly from the goalie but the mêlée on the goal line has found Jamie Trent hoofing the ball into the back of the net, and rightfully there’s pandemonium in the stands!

:- Bostopia, 2006-06-21

Where the Elves fail, Bostopia gain a measure of success, holding Liverpool England to a famous two-all draw.

But it was at this point where Bostopia stop being co-protagonists. I never got to the bit where I researched and wrote about early Bostopia. Whoops sorry lol.

Zacharius and Kyla Night are the scorers of Elves Security Forces’s first two goals in World Cup football, but these aren’t their first goals in dark blue. In something of a theme for this series, they made their debuts in a long-forgotten regional tournament, this one called The Young World Cup, its results unfortunately lost to entropy. Zacharius, on 58 caps at the start of World Cup 29, is described as “an average striker", but one kept in the first team through their leadership skills. In thirty games in and around the regional tournament of The Young World Kyla Night has scored twenty-one goals. Come the end of the cycle, she will help herself to ten of her side’s 25 goals, with Zacharius netting six. Nicknamed the Devil’s Kiss, she represents the birth of this nation as a major footballing powerhouse.

You won't find a better strike partnership in the world football, at least not at the time. You may look at the volume of their goalscoring output and doubt that a little, but consider this: The two players are an item. During qualifying the pair announce their intention to marry in a ceremony that will coincide with World Cup 29’s final. By the start of World Cup 30, they have a two year old son.

Elven Times
What's On The Horizon?

With the upcoming 30th edition of the NSWC (Nationstates World Cup) and our Elven Marauders entry into it, we look ahead to the competition.

Q: Will the Marauders do one better off their last campaign and qualify for the proper?
A: We think Yes.
Why?: With the expierence gained from the first go around, the squad is now ready and knows what to expect from their competition.

Q: Will Night be the leading scorer for the Marauders?
A: Of course.
Why?: Night is the best player that the ESF has ever seen, and she just continues to get better.

Q: Now that Zacharius and Night are hitched and have a kid, how long until we see the child on the pitch?
A: As soon as they are eligable
Why?: His parents are two of the top 3 strikers in the ESF history, enough said. Expect to see young Kiso Night in the 33rd Cup where he will be 15, which would make him the youngest elf on the national team.

:- Elves Security Forces, 2006-08-01

Kyla Night would indeed be the top scorer for her side in the qualifiers, not only for World Cup 30, but 31 and 32. She has it all. Speed. Skill. Talent.

But not luck.

Disastrous results throughout qualifying for World Cups 30 and 32 resulted in the side getting no further than mid-table, while in a World Cup 31 qualifying group of death they would find themselves pipped at the finish by, of all nations, regional rivals Demot. Goalscoring prowess alone isn't enough. You need lashings upon lashings of luck as well.

Qualifying records, cycles 29-33
           Pld   W   D   L  GD   PPG Qualifications
Quakmybush  62  38  11  13  74  2.02 4
Valanora    62  26  10  26  -4  1.42 0

While Quakmybush would never quite get going in the World Cup proper, ESF made a fist of things in the Cup of Harmony. Having turned down the offer in cycle 29, Cycle 30’s Marauders would do what so many future incarnations of their team would do: Reach the final of a WCC tournament. Dance 2 Revolution, mentioned before as “A Side Sativaville Wanted To Be”, were waiting in the final. Beaten finalists in the Cup of Harmony after World Cup 12, beaten finalists in World Cup 17, D2R finally took some silverware by virtue of an extra-time goal from…

RP was here...but jolt failed to post...will replace ASAP

:- Dance 2 Revolution 2006-09-30

Oh okay D2R yeah we’ll wait.

Whatever actually happened, Kyla Night’s six tournament goals were to be for nought.

Between cycles 29 and 32, at every opportunity, the Marauders threatened to take the world by storm and failed.

The side are desperate not to let their chance at World Cup 33 pass them by. Looking for some kind of impetus, the side find the Prince that was Promised. The Foretold. The Prodigal Son. First born kin of Marauder strike duo Kyla Night and Zacharia: Kiso Night. At just sixteen years old, Kiso takes up a starting spot alongside mother and father in a new 3-4-3 system that suits the expansive Vanorian style of play. Kiso would score six goals throughout qualifying, Kyla nine, with Zacharius finally taking a brief step from his wife’s shadow to net twelve.

It’s only enough for a 9-4-4 record going into the final game, with the side a distant third behind Bettia and Jeruselem. They enter their final game of qualifying knowing that, to be absolutely certain of making the big dance, to be granted the opportunity to play in the World Cup held in Quakmybush, they would need to end their qualifying campaign with a win. A win against a team that knows all about winning.

Their opponents are Lovisa.

[The Idiot Project]

Working titles: A Shit Cliffhanger, Nights at the Circus, A Squire of the Empire

6

Love is a Battlefield
Written: January 2023

Okay so here’s something that totally doesn’t work in text form. Finishing a chapter with a cliff-hanger wherein we try to make a drama out of whether or not Elves Security Forces will win a football game. It's silly. Of course ESF win.

ESF win 9-0.

Elves Security Forces 9
Zacharius (6)
Kyla Night (9)
Tobias Raynor (31, 39)
Rick Ceullar (56)
Justinian Constant (62)
Kiso Night (70, 74)
Liliam Kries (87)

Lovisa 0

:- Elves Security Forces 2007-03-04

Yes okay the times don’t match up, this isn't from after the match, I’m just a sucker for a Lovisa RP

This is also one of the disadvantages of releasing an episode of The Idiot Project in text form instead of its more traditional format of a smug, bloated, scrappily directed YouTube documentary. You’ll just have to imagine the montage. Go find a high-energy synthwave song and listen to it while you read this text.

“How does it feel ESF, how does it feel to know that our beloved Marauders have finally achieved the dream? Are you in such ecstasy and joy that the emotion needs no words? Are you dancing through the streets and painting yourself navy and black? Have you purchased tickets to Quakmybush and will see the Marauders in such a magnificent venue and circumstances that the tale will be told to your children and grandchildren for years and generations to come? However you may or may not be celebrating, be sure to take this trip in in all of its everlasting glory, for who knows when we will be making a return trip.”

:- ESF, 2007-03-05

The Marauders had made it. But this is far from their final form.

Elves Security Forces would win two of their three group games to join hosts Quakmybush in the last sixteen. There, Geisenfried would prove too strong for the home side, while the Marauders would come up against Turori. A tough draw. Not only were they the reigning Cup of Harmony champions, the side had won two of the previous four TUR/ESF encounters to the Marauders one. Turori had the edge, but instantly surrendered said edge via this RP:

Slow to the Source, Elven "Behind The" Times

Turorian's both home and abroad have been widely anticipating the matchup between their side and Elves Security Forces. To the disappointment of Turorians however, who have a reputation for always looking for new sources of information to read and understand, news out of the Elven lands has been terse at best. In fact, it was not until the morning of the match that the biggest news source in the foreign land recognized the match, as well as the other 7 second round ties, in their sports section.

It is unknown whether this lack in media interest in the match will carry over into the match attendance, however one thing is certain, the Eel Brigade will be out in full force as thousands of Turorians are already in Quakmybush, making the short trip across Atlantian Oceania to support their club.

:- Turori, 2007-03-12

You’d imagine it would have basically formed the script for ESF manager Michael Revtron’s pre-match team talk, which inspired ESF to duly pick up the same hammer they’d used to pummel Lovisa and bonk Turori soundly over the head with it. Zacharius scored once, Kyla Night scored twice. Night, who’d previously celebrated a goal in her side’s only other win over Turori by dancing in front of their bench, didn’t feel like reining in the sass after dumping Turori out of the competition.

“Night and Tatum drove the crowd to cheers with a dance routine in front of the Turori bench.”

:- ESF, August 28th 2006

"Those crazy Cocoabos were all out of sorts out there on the pitch, but I guess that is the risk you run when you use crazy critters instead of a full human(or humananoid) squad.” :- Kyla Night

:- Elves Security Forces 2007-03-14

“These Turori squads are nothing, I want a real challange. They call this series a budding rivalry, but I would rather play Assegai, Demot, Fort Europe, or even those stinking Makaar squads than Turori, at least they have some class.” :- Zacharius[/align]

The Marauders would bow out in the quarter-finals to mid-thirties stalwarts Wentland but, buoyed by their best ever cycle, would power through to World Cup 34 with nine wins and a draw from ten qualifying games. At the finals, the Empire would reach the quarters, defeat The Holy Empire, and march forth to a semi-final showdown with Milchama. The game goes to penalties.

In a tense shoot-out, Kiso Night scores for ESF, before two wayward spot-kicks in a row tip the balance in favour of their opponents. The Milchaman records say that, here, Kyla Night would miss her spot-kick, with Kelvin Joseph netting to make it four-one on penalties to Milchama. That, of course, can’t be right. There’d be no point in Joseph taking that fourth Milchaman spot-kick if they’d been winning 3-1 with one Marauder spot kick left. This final result of 4-1 can’t be contested, so what I’m about to assert, against the historical record, is that contrary to this Milchama account, Milchama must have gone first. Joseph’s penalty would have sealed the game at 4-1, and that this Kyla miss simply. never. happens.

“Night, the best ESF player of all time, gets ready to try to help her team in the finals. All she needs to do is stroke this penalty to keep it alive for the Marauders. She comes in with confidence, goes right and Dalton follows her to the save!”

:- Milchama, May 13th 2007

Whatever your interpretation, this is the final recorded moment of Kyla Night in the blue and black of the Elves Security Forces national team. In a rare occurrence for a Marauder of note, she leaves the national team set up empty handed, with no silverware to her name.

For Elves Security Forces, Kyla Night cannot be replaced up front. The side need to find a way to build the team around the space she left behind. As such, they do away with the 3-4-3 system that took them to 3rd place in World Cup 34, and adopt a 3-5-2. It’s a system the side still utilise to this day. It’s similar to the old way, but with one change. Instead of the extra striker, the Marauders decide to play an advanced playmaker, linking the midfield and attack and supplying service for talisman Kiso Night. Into this position, the one vacated by Kyla, comes a newcomer to the first eleven.

Prodigiously talented, fiercely determined, six foot five inches tall but fleet of foot, sharp of mind, with a healthy dose of Nominative Determinism. Kyla was the Mother, the First Knight of Marauder football, Zacharius the father, the dutiful number two. Kiso the Prodigial Son, the third to bear the name. And This is Number Four. No relation to the others, at least not by blood, but the definitive inheritor of the Estate of the Eternal Empire.

His name is Laborious Hawk.

In his first full cycle as a first-teamer, the Empire are Imperious. They win ten out of twelve in qualifying for World Cup 35, including a then-record 11-0 win over Keyne Island.

Cycle 34 would see Quakmybush fail to qualify for the first time. They’d struggle initially in qualifying for World Cup 35, suffering back to back defeats on matchdays one and two to Bostopia and Bettia. Nevertheless, with Cory Sorley and John Fields still pulling the strings, they turn their fortunes around. It’s the former that nets the winner in the return leg against Bostopia, and after a horrific run for the Bostopians, Quakmybush go through in second place to make their fifth World Cup in six cycles. For the first time, Quakmybush and The Empire have successfully progressed from qualifying in the same cycle. For a brief moment, it looks like there *is* enough luck for the two of them. Fleetingly, the casual absurdity of Quakmybush coexists in the same universe as Elunian Divinity. But surely there is only space for one of these two nations in the upper echelons of world football?

Let’s find out.

World Cup 35 Group stage. Matchday One. Elves Security Forces versus Quakmybush.

[The Idiot Project]

Working title: Another Shit Cliffhanger

7

Quak/Hawk Down
Written: January 2023

Oh god damnit I’ve fucking done it again.

Is… is anyone expecting a Quakmybush win here? Anyone? Is anyone anticipating the beginning of a period of extended domination the likes of which the Multiverse will never see again? No? Nobody? Of course not. You know what happens. This is The Idiot Project. And we did not make an episode called Untitled Quack Game.

They may not yet be in their final form, but the Marauders don’t lose big games in episodes of The Idiot Project. We missed out on the two-minute Lovisa montage out of a lack of time and resources, but we’re not missing out on anything here.

Elves Security Forces win three nil. Kiso Night scores all three, assisted twice by Laborious Hawk.

Quakmybush will qualify for the next two tournaments, barely, but they are no longer in the same universe as ESF, and it shows in cycle thirty-eight. Drawn together in Qualifying Group 1, the Marauders beat the Sharks 6-1 in Quakmybush and 5-3 in the Empire. They nevertheless qualify together, if fifteen points apart, and both sides meet in the first round of that very cup. Elves Security Forces make one change. A significant one. They finally discard the ESF moniker and refer to themselves officially, from here on out, as the Eternal Empire of Valanora.

But this new boss is the same as the old boss. One of their first duties as wardens of the bottom sixth of the alphabet is to smash little Quakmybush 4-1. Valanora are dominant. And this is still not even their final form.

We’ve attempted to quantify Vanorian brilliance a few times, but it is worth repeating:

Early-to-mid Hawk-era Valanora, from cycles 34 to 55, is the greatest team in the history of football. Yes, even though it is not really their final form. Between world cups 38 and 45, their lowest finish is third. Not third in their group: Third in the *World Cup*. This team are not Generationally dominant, they are Lifetime dominant. The World Cup could go on long after you or I are dead, reduced to the twenty people who still remember how QWERTY keyboards and bbcode work, and this record will not be repeated. Even in the seven cycles after World Cup 48, they are eliminated before the Quarter Finals only once. Laborious Hawk, Espy va Drake, Faeron Soldarian, Kiso Night and, later, Allandren Fresco, form the backbone of the greatest team that has ever, ever existed in the history of NS Sport.

World Cup 55 is the twenty-third cycle in a row where the Empire are in full flow. How do you stop them? How do you bring down an empire? What kind of team can stand tall enough to look the elves square in the eye, draw their swords, and better them?

I don’t know. I don’t know how you bring down an empire. But I do know when.

March 15th.

The story has, by this point, largely gotten away from 2023 Audio. The Quak and ESF threads end here.

7.5

Extra Quak Stuff
Written: January 2023

Quakmybush’s participation in World Cups became intermittent during the 40s and 50s until they eventually dropped out of the KPB rankings altogether. This, though afforded them an opportunity. 26 cycles after misunderstanding the name of the Baptism of Fire, Quakmybush make a comeback via The Fireball Thing using the loophole previously taken advantage of by Starblaydia and Dance 2 Revolution. They’ve never been in the BoF before and their rank is zero. These are, according to the rules as they stood in 2011, the main prerequisites for eligibility to compete in the Baptism of Fire. It is a rebirth, a new look team, with one familiar name.

Quakmybush rosters have always been a little intermittent. Cycle 40’s roster had listed the usual suspects of Fields, Sorley and Cam, but by the time of the next available roster, from World Cup 47, there had been a shake-up of sorts. Fields, documented as “retired” in roleplays from cycle 46, had by this time been replaced by John Fields Junior.

John Fields Senior, therefore, played at least 11 cycles of football. Maybe as many as 15. If you’re wondering if he made it into the CL club, the answer is no. The absolute maximum amount of losses he could have played in is 72.

Their roster for BoF 42 lists John Fields the Seventh in midfield, apparent great great <etc> grandson of the Cycle 29 original. By the time of their next available roster, from World Cup 65, he has been replaced by a fourth John Fields. This one’s name is John Fields the Fourth. Hey. Time works differently across the multiverse.

Baptism of Fire 42 has been touched upon before, noting the abnormally above-average performance of Cabric back in Episode 2. A Casaran system, the BoF was unusually large even by today’s standards, boasting a bumper 64 nations.

The eventual winners and runners-up of the tournament are Kangaroo Republic and Whiteinch, perhaps the best argument against the Casaran system I’ve ever seen in the Multiverse, because this was one of the most stacked Baptism of Fire tournaments in history.

For example, two of these BoF teams are about to shape much of the next dozen cycles of World Cup football. They share almost nothing in common but a friendship. A friendship and, funnily enough, a date.

[The Idiot Project]

I don't know how I was ever going to put the split-screen airbourne denouement into video form.

8

The Ides of March
Written: January 2023

Midwinter in Franz Josef City is as wintery as you’ll get in the multiverse. To say the conditions are hardly conducive to football would be an understatement, but also an underestimation of the constitution of the average Polarian. Undeterred by this permanent night sky, one midwinter evening, the Polar Islandstates Football Association put the gears in motion for the creation of a new national team. One that would take part in World Cup 55 and its preceding Baptism of Fire. 46 players were whittled down to 23 over the course of seven scratch games, each drawing more media attention than the last.

With their debut tournament approaching, the Polarians asked for volunteers from foreign shores to brave the journey north for what they laughably called a warm-up game. Naturally, very few teams took them up on the offer. Their international debut would take place a few days before the beginning of spring, on a bright yet blisteringly cold afternoon on the Fifteenth of March. Polar Islandstates versus Astograth.

---------------- Karlsson --------------
- Makarov --- Berg -- Marek -- Pekarik -
---- Bielsen ---- Golubev --- Hansen ---
------------- van Jendrisen ---.--------
--------- Skye -- Ackermann-Finn -------

:- Polar Islandstates 2011-03-15

---------- Sarlange ---- Baranzano -----
----------------- Bularte --------------
------Bordato--------------Belarte------
-----------------Urrustoy---------------
Orbizo-----Erburu-------Mendiroz--Atzpiri
------------------Aira------------------

:- Astograth 2011-03-15

A number of these names are going to reverberate throughout history. Milian Erburu of Ituraitz FC will soon become the national team captain. The dependable Edorta Urrustoy, wild Iturributan Soter Sarlange and diminutive Dei Ormache will spend much of the next century being lauded by elderly Astograthians whose grandsons insist some *new* guy is the best thing in Astograthian soccer. Dei Ormache? What do you mean you don’t see him in the first eleven?

Oh, right. He’s listed there but for some reason doesn’t appear in the ascii max graphic. With him on schroedinger’s subs bench is the stern, professional Ituraitz FC captain Laurgain Erlis, who studies the game earnestly. Next to him, Bayardo Morriyas is likely wearing as many layers as possible: The Royal Association captain hates the cold, if this story is anything to go by

​​It was a bleak winter afternoon and Royal Association was playing at home to Echegoyan FC. Heavy rain, a terrible cold, a mud-filled pitch and Bayardo Morriyas sitting on the bench wearing two sweatpants, a blanket, a hood and a scarf, arms folded and eyes on the floor. The team wasn't creating chances and Inguma Uberuaga performing very poorly as playmaker. “Morriyas, get ready, you're going on for Uberuaga,” he said. Morriyas, shivering, lifted his neck out of the bench and squinted. “Do you think so, coach, really? Uberuaga's doing really well, I think,” It took a while for the rest of the subs to stop laughing.”

:- Astograth, 2011-9-12

The opposing bench contains a teenage Alexsandr van Sorensen, a man we’ve covered before. It also contains a future WCC President in Sol Kirkkegaard, while above them the enigmatic Magnus Ragnorak sits, likely yelling garbled instructions at nobody in particular through mouthfuls of cheap brandy. Magnus Ragnorak is a character we cover in detail later in the hypothetical version of this script which is actually properly, properly researched.

The biggest name on the blue side of the pitch is a man who will insist Polar Islandstates be a big player in international football from the get go. Tall, powerful and alarmingly skillful, his name will live on long after his playing days are through. Polaria’s first talisman: Timo Skye. A man who is about to be upstaged so much that we won’t actually mention him later either.

Urrustoy grabs the first goal of the game. Centre half Maarten Berg nets Polar Islandstates’s response, with fan favourite Patrick Ackermann-Finn putting the Terns into the lead. It would not last long. An Astograthian free-kick whipped against the post soon after, and Sarlange was first to the rebound, crashing into the post himself on the follow-through.

When he recovers, Sarlange can hear nothing. He hasn’t gone deaf. This is the silence of the 30,000 strong crowd around him. The stadium, adorned with Polarian flags, feels a sense of anti-climax. As talented as they are, Polar Islandstates will have to work harder to make an impact on the international football scene, a fact borne out by their 2-0 defeat to Mangolana a week later.

World Cup 55 will be a learning experience for both teams, neither of which are able to trouble the qualifying spots. They’re both confident they can make a better fist of things in World Cup 56, but both are served a Group of Death: Former champions Errinundera, a strong Kagdazka and Pazujhebu, and each other.

By this time, both nations had been drawn closer together culturally. Astograthian footballers had been tempted north by the wages Polarian clubs were spending, with Dei Ormache the most notable, joining Franz Josef City from Ituraitz FC, while plenty of Polarians had moved the other way, such as ​​Petter Bielsen exchanging the revolutionionarily-named Red Star Severny for the revolutionarily-spirited Iturributa United.

The relationship between the two football associations was so strong that, in early summer, two recently retired Astogratian players would be invited to the opening of a Youth Football Club in Urri, in the Kuril Archipelago in Polar Islandstates. Erlis and Morriyas, two squad members from Astograth’s first ever game, would attend as honorary guests. With them would be Polarian FA chairman Magnus Ragnorak, Finn Henriksen of local side ​​SK 1982 Matua and young Jan Mayen Islanders striker Tomas Aer. The five would make the journey to and from the opening by seaplane, really the only way to travel around these arctic islands.

At the opening, the Polarians give speeches. The Astograthians do not. These two nations do not share a language. Most Astograthians struggle to understand whatever it is the Polarians call those noises that come out of their mouths.

"And so that is why we are all here today, to open this youth kentre. As far out west as we are here in this tiny island string of ours, we will never give up and let the easterners get too far ahead of us. This is a fine klub, here. The fakilities are excellent, the motive is noble, and I am sure that we will see the next batkh of Kuril superstars koming out of this klub in the next few years. Ladies and gentlemen, here to finally open this klub and kut the red ribbon, I give you your FPIFA khairman, Mr Magnus Ragnorak."

There was a smattering of applause amongst the gathered crowd as the bearded enigma that was Magnus Ragnorak took to the stage. Finn Henriksen sat down again. He'd done his bit. Sitting next to the increasingly bored looking Tomas Aer, he tuned out and let the stress wash back out of him. He never had been a confident public speaker, far preferred letting his football do the talking for him.

He was half listening to what Ragnorak was saying. Something about hands across the ocean, a cringe-worthy comparison to some sort of marine mammal, some sort of half-baked song. He really was a tremendously odd human being. Continuing his speech, he began listing the ceremonial reasons for the players being there. Aer for the promise of youth, Henriksen for the power of Kuril and Erlis and Morriyas for... well, he wasn't sure about that really. Astograth and the Federation had fine international relations and a healthy competitive rivalry on the football pitch, but the two Astograthi players, whose bored heads picked up when they heard their names being mentioned in this language they didn't fully understand, were also clearly wondering quite why it was fully necessary for them to be there.

Flashbulbs started popping, it must be time for the ribbon cutting. Looking across, Henriksen watched as Ragnorak took hold of the comedy-sized scissors with a local child, and hacked three times at the ribbon before cutting it. Smooth, Magnus, smooth.

"Huge ceremony, eh?" said Aer, leaning across with a sarcastic glint in his eye.

"Whooh, yeah," replied Henriksen, completely missing the sarcasm, "Half the town must be here."

"But, there must be like, eighty people here. Tops. And two sheep."

"That's right." said Henriksen, nonplussed.

"Oh. I see."

"Welcome to Kuril, komrade. Kome on, lets go and talk to the Astograthis, they look bored, and we've got a plane back to Torshavn with them later today, we should make an effort." said Henriksen, standing up and walking towards the two foreigners.

"Er, yeah, maybe in a bit." replied Aer, clearly not that keen on the idea. "I'll catch you up." Sitting back down again, Aer surveyed the crowd in front of him. Eighty people, and two sheep. Ah, fame. Aer got out his portable games console, and began to play. Get him back to the big city. Back to his couch, and back to his flatscreen TV.

:- Polar Islandstates 2011-07-20

Aer isn’t one for talking. The Astograthians might be, but struggle to understand a word Finn’s saying. Ragnorak is too mad to talk to. As such, the flight home should be a quiet one.

Polar Islandstates 2011-07-22	adapted from Astograth RPs dated 2011-07-19 - 2011-07-22
Henriksen clenched the arms of his chair tightly. Very tightly. The take off had been bad enough but now he was having to endure turbulence like he never had done before. He sat back and tried to relax.	"What was that?" asked Morriyas in a louder tone of voice.
He glanced at his fellow passengers. Looking to his left, he saw Tomas Aer, not even slightly disturbed by the turbulence as he played on his portable games console, the constant beeping and whirring signalling his progress through the levels.	"Turbulence." answered back Erlis.
Behind him, Henriksen could hear the two Astograth players muttering to each other in dulcet, foreign tones. He had attempted to get to know them after the ceremony in Urri but the language barrier had got in the way.	If the situation wasn't so tense, Morriyas would've stared back at him with a not-at-all-amused look on his face. He had either a sociopath or someone with a very wry sense of humour sitting next to him.
There was a crackle and a hiss as the pilot's intercom kicked into action.	The plane was again shaken violently as the intercom crackled and came on.
"Right folks, erm, as you may be able to tell, we've got some turbulence issues up here today. Um the reason for that is just to the port side of the plane, erm, there's a hell of a storm kicking up to the north of us here, to the west of Matahiko. Erm, we're taking a diversionary route to the south of our planned route but we shouldn't have too much of a time delay on our planned arrival in Torshavn. Um, so yeah, just try and sit back, and Johannes and I will try and get us around this weather system."	“Bø̈rk bø̈rk bø̈rk bø̈rk hürdy gürdy børk børk, bø̈rk bø̈rk hürdy gürdy hürdy gürdy børk. Um. Bø̈rk bø̈rk bø̈rk bø̈rk hürdy gürdy børk bø̈rk bø̈rk hürdy gürdy børk børk, bø̈rk bø̈rk hürdy gürdy hürdy gürdy børk bø̈rk bø̈rk bø̈rk bø̈rk hürdy Matahiko børk børk, bø̈rk bø̈rk hürdy gürdy hürdy gürdy børk. Bø̈rk bø̈rk bø̈rk bø̈rk hürdy Torshavn børk børk, bø̈rk bø̈rk hürdy gürdy hürdy gürdy børk Johan bø̈rk bø̈rk bø̈rk bø̈rk hürdy gürdy børk børk, bø̈rk bø̈rk hürdy gürdy hürdy gürdy børk.”
Looking from side to side, Henriksen wasn't even sure if his fellow passengers had even heard that announcement. Were they even bothered? Was Henriksen alone here? Did nobody else care that the plan was basically being shaken to pieces? Henriksen began breathing heavier and heavier. This was no good. This was no good at all. "Tomas, Tomas are you okay? Are you feeling this?" Henriksen turned and grabbed Aer's shoulder. "Yeah man, storm, diversion, level up, turbulence, whatever. Let go of me man." Aer tried to shrug him off and didn't move his gaze off the game he was playing. More turbulence hit the plane, and one of the prop engines let out a whirr and a whining noise. The pilot's intercom crackled into life once more	.
"Okay guys, we're hitting some more patches of heavy air here and the plane is going to get a little rocky, erm, we may have to drop altitude in a little while to avoid the worst of it but its coming over pretty swiftly at the moment. So, I'm going to erm, hit the seatbelt alert up and erm, if you could all just stay calm and click yourselves in then that would be great. Thanks guys."	“Okay bø̈rk bø̈rk bø̈rk hürdy gürdy børk børk, bø̈rk bø̈rk air gürdy hürdy plane børk. Um. Bø̈rk bø̈rk bø̈rk bø̈rk hürdy gürdy børk bø̈rk altitude hürdy gürdy børk børk, bø̈rk worst hürdy gürdy hürdy gürdy børk bø̈rk bø̈rk bø̈rk momento hürdy børk børk, bø̈rk seatbelt hürdy gürdy hürdy stay calm. Bø̈rk bø̈rk bø̈rk bø̈rk bø̈rk bø̈rk bø̈rk hürdy gürdy børk børk, bø̈rk bø̈rk hürdy gürdy hürdy Thanks Børk.”
"What? What, what, what?" Henriksen fumbled for his seatbelt, missing twice before it finally gave way and clunked into place. He looked around. Everyone else had done so calmly. Why was he the only one panicking here? Why was nobody else fretting? Was he the only one- His next panic was interrupted by yet another shake of the aircraft. The whole world jumped up and down. The pilot's intercom cracked and wheezed, but nothing happened. The plane shook violently. The other engine started to wheeze as well. Aer looked up. "Hey man, did you feel that?"	.
.	The lights went out, and the sound of the failing engines got louder. Morriyas panicked, and he felt he wasn't the only one in that condition in the cabin. Beside him, Erlis was holding onto his seat tightly, and in front Aer was shining around the light of his games console. Besides casting eerie shadows all over the place, it let Morriyas see that Henriksen was frozen in place, his voice stammering and desperate. The starboard engine stopped emitting sound altogether, and the plane lurched. Morriyas felt they were at an angle now, and couldn't help but whimper as he thought of his family in Iturributa. He'd just retired. Fifteen years chasing after a ball, and he got this in return? It wasn't fair! Amidst the confusion he remembered the typical pre-flight instructions, which he'd only ever really paid attention to once, which until now he'd thought was one time too many. He grabbed the seat in front of him and braced for a crash, gesturing to Erlis to do the same. Aer noticed him and quickly spread it around as well. So they stayed for minutes that felt like hours, the noise of the turbulence and the port engine interspersed with the moans of Morriyas, Henriksen and, up front, Magnus Ragnorak. Suddenly, they were all jarred forward with a terrible force accompanied by the tremendous sound of a collision.