Act I — Wild Roses: the third one, and the same record twice
Wild Roses Edmonton are champions of World League 1 for a third consecutive season — 74 points, 23 wins, 5 draws, 2 defeats, 64 scored, 12 conceded. The won-drawn-lost line is identical, digit for digit, to the one that opened this run of titles back in Season 11 (23-5-2); the goals are not (79:9 then, 64:12 now), which the club has filed under "different route, same destination." Raiders led from Round 2 to Round 20, as they so often do, and Wild Roses took the top spot in Round 21 and did not give it back, going 11 matches unbeaten from Round 20 and pulling six points clear by the finish. The cabinet now reads four golds — three of them consecutive — five silvers, three bronzes.
Milosz Kolasa, 31 — the header that won the title on the ninetieth minute a year ago — is still in the side, sits on 118 career goals, and Vlaho Jambrović, 34, the left-back who has now started matches at three different titles, has climbed to 359 career appearances, 32 goals and 73 assists, the last figure the highest of any defender in the game. The season opened with drama rather than comfort: Round 1, Nordlys IF 1-0 Wild Roses, FOUR red cards — Faísca and Munera both dismissed for the champions, a professional foul and a second yellow either side of a straight red for Nordlys — a defeat the club shrugged off for eleven straight wins from Round 2.
Act II — Raiders: second again, and second for a reason this newspaper is running out of ways to phrase
68 points, 21 wins, 5 draws, 4 defeats, 62 scored, 14 conceded — second, six points back, for the fourth time in the club's history and the third time to Wild Roses specifically. Nineteen rounds on top before the reversal in Round 21. Hector Ojeda, 35, scored, assisted, and now sits on 240 career goals, 67 assists and 319 appearances — three hundred is visible from here — while Attila Sasu, 36, retired this season with 325 appearances and 77 career assists from centre-back, and Mario Rățulea, 36, retired alongside him on 352 appearances and 59 assists. Two of the longest-serving names in the club's history left in the same week the club finished second again. The blank space for an eighth top-flight title remains blank, and has now been blank long enough that this column no longer speculates about when it will be filled.
Act III — Sharks third by attack, Banatul's two strikers, and the ninth again
Gold Coast Sharks, third on 67, scored 79 — the best attack in the division — and conceded 19, with three separate 6-0s (Espada, FC Dacia, Baltic). Banatul Timisoara, fourth on 52, own the division's first and third-highest scorers: Hooman Moslehi, 33, nineteen goals, the Golden Boot, and Krunoslav Bekavac — thirty in a single Season 6 haul, fifteen more this time, still finding the net for a club that spent the year mid-table. And the season's two largest individual scorelines happened a fortnight apart: Round 25, Wild Roses 9-0 Espada — the second-biggest win in top-flight history, one short of Kaiser's decade-old 10-0 — and Round 18, Kaiser 1-8 Banatul, Moslehi and Bekavac's own doing. FC Sipp finished bottom with 17 points, Hussars fifteenth with 21, and Black Army fourteenth after conceding 46 — the division's floor is getting crowded with familiar names.
Act IV — The Golden Boots: a teenager's ratio, a Wednesday signing all grown up, and a name new to this column
Hooman Moslehi, Banatul — 19 goals, the World 1 title, for a club that finished fourth. Downstairs: Luca Barsotti, 24, Spicey Boys — 22 goals and 5 assists in just FIFTEEN appearances, a scoring rate that makes his own 22-goal, no-defeats Season 12 campaign look leisurely by comparison; he sits on 61 career goals in 59 matches. And in World 3, a name this column introduced two years ago as "bought on the Wednesday for 8,942, five goals by the Sunday": Damien Blenheim, 24, Oresund — 21 goals and 3 assists, now a full first-team season into the job, 29 career goals in 36 matches, for a club that finished runner-up in the division he scored his way into.
Act V — World 2: Spicey Boys again, from the front, without needing the invincible season this time
Spicey Boys Barranco are champions of World 2 with 77 points — 25 wins, 2 draws, 3 defeats, 94 scored, 23 conceded — top from Round 2, a 14-match win streak, and a season that is merely excellent rather than a world-record, which is what a 30-0 unbeaten World 3 campaign does to a club's baseline. Astral Amsterdam, second on 69, and Cape Town Storm, third on 66, round out a top three that outscored the rest of the division by a wide margin; Motors and Butterfly finished bottom, both relegated with goal differences worse than minus twenty-five.
Act VI — World 3: Bania, at last, a first title in the club's history
Bania Craiova are champions of World 3 with 56 points — 17 wins, 5 draws, 8 defeats, 60 scored, 37 conceded — the club's first world-division title after a decade of finishing fourth, fifth, and fourth again with the division's biggest scorers and never the trophy. Oresund Copenhagen, second on 53 — the club that won last year's Friendly Ranking and the qualifiers in the same fortnight — go straight into a promotion push with Blenheim already among the division's top scorers (Act IV). Hammer, third on 49, led the table for long stretches through the middle rounds before Bania's late run — five points clear by Round 28 — settled it. Vikings finished bottom with 20 points, 19 scored and 66 conceded, the worst goal difference of any division this season.
Act VII — THE FRIENDLIES: a debutant with sixty-eight matches by Sunday, and a real club not far behind
135 series, every one completed; 4,823 friendly goals; 91 clubs took part. The ranking champion is a name regular readers will recognise: Galaxy Vilnius — registered this season, 68 matches (the maximum possible), 51 wins, 11 draws, 6 defeats, 186 scored, 39 conceded, 164 ranking points, the highest total this column has printed. Whatever is happening in Vilnius, it is happening at a pace the rest of the division has not attempted to match. Juventud, 122 — second, and Avala, 101 — third, complete the podium; Stars Accra 100 just miss it. Elsewhere on the sheet, the campaign worth a second look belongs to a club that actually spent the season contesting a league title: Wild Roses Edmonton, 91 points from just 32 matches — 30 wins, 1 draw, 1 defeat, 100 scored, 13 conceded — a three-time champion that treats its friendlies with the same discipline it brings to Round 1. Wildcards into next season's qualifiers: three, none yet resolved — last column's tenants, Juventud among them, will report back next year on whether they needed the invitation.
Act VIII — The Qualifiers: a debutant beats two sitting champions, a penalty shootout at 8-8, and a three-goal comeback
Six slots to World League 3, six ties in the final round, eight shootouts along the way. The story of the bracket belongs to a club three acts have already mentioned: Galaxy Vilnius, undefeated across all four rounds — Ras Al Khor Dubai (0-0, 3-1), then Bravos Açorianos, Portugal's sitting champions (0-1, 4-0), then Nordkette Innsbruck (3-0, 0-4), then Europe Brussels, Belgium's sitting champions (3-0, 1-2) — a club that did not exist at the start of the season beat two countries' reigning champions back to back on the way to a World League place. The other five: Vittoria Verona, down 2-3 after leg one against Trovadores, won the second leg 5-2 for a 7-5 aggregate — the bracket's best comeback; Juventud beat Kings United Johannesburg comfortably, their bye-turned-victory a franchise habit at this point; Naniwa beat Harimau Selatan; Mayab and Avala went 5-4 and 4-3 — 8-8 on aggregate — before Mayab won the shootout 5-3; and CD Volcán put out Asteras Rhodes. Six countries — Lithuania among them for the first time — send a club each to World League 3.
Act IX — Mercato: a ten-thousand-credit defender and forty-six others
Forty-seven transfers, 55,819 credits. The invoice table is led by Edwin Höfler, 21, a centre-back, 10,001 credits to Jalisco Guadalajara — the second-largest fee this column has recorded, behind only Luján's 15,000. Behind him: Yannick Prost, 8,200, to Mayab Merida; Franck Tia, 6,640, to Detroit Motors; Joseph Cope, 4,802, to Gold Coast Sharks; Avelino Roseira, 4,550, to Viljandi Hundis. Only one owner sold a player of their own this season, down from the two-and-three of recent years; the rest of the market moved through the pool.
Act X — Crime blotter: 979 matches, a chairman who has resumed twice, and a repeat offender in Aberdeen
979 of the season's 2,788 matches featured at least one red card; 1,029 penalties were awarded, 876 scored. Round 1 set the tone: Nordlys 1-0 Wild Roses with four reds before the season was ninety minutes old (Act I). Tianjama Kontao, Seattle Pacific's goalkeeper, whose career total this column has tracked at fifteen and then sixteen, has added two more and sits on eighteen — the chairman keeps resuming. And in World 3, Finn Walsh of Aberdeen Bad Boys collected his fourth red card of the season in Round 24, an eight-match ban attached, the most punished player in the division; Bad Boys — last year's wildcard entrants, up from Scotland without winning Scotland — finished a respectable thirteenth in their first World League 3 season, Walsh's discipline notwithstanding.
Act XI — Births and farewells: two new countries, a champion at the first attempt, and the second-largest retiring class ever
Belgium and Ireland fielded full leagues for the first time this season. Kölner Adler won GER_L1 in their debut campaign — first win, first goal, and the title, all inside six rounds. New Delhi Warriors, Lapacho Asunción, Monza DecioLegio, Guanabara Rio de Janeiro, Tamtranlu Ho Chi Minh City and Santana São Paulo all played their first competitive matches.
The retiring class numbers 408 — the second-largest ever, behind only the founding 486 of Season 1, and it is led out by Giuseppe Cilloni of Gladiator, 34, who retires with 374 appearances, 37 goals and 19 assists — the most-capped active player in the game when the season began, and now the answer to the question this column has been tracking since he passed 350. Dinu Drăgănescu of Banatul, 36, retires with 335 appearances, 38 goals and 38 assists, and Raiders' own Attila Sasu and Mario Rățulea (Act II) leave the same week in the same colours. The gold watches were, as ever, invoiced to the friendlies budget, and Galaxy Vilnius' 164 ranking points mean it can afford rather more of them than usual.
Final standings
World 1: 1. Wild Roses Edmonton 74 · 2. Bucharest Raiders 68 · 3. Gold Coast Sharks 67 · 4. Banatul Timisoara 52 · 5. Nordlys IF Oslo 51 · 6. Baltic Tallinn 50 · 7. FC Dacia Brasov 48 · 8. Pyramids Giza 35 · 9. Lions FC Lagos 33 (−12) · 10. Imperial Tokyo 33 (−25) · 11. Seattle Pacific 32 (−11) · 12. Kaiser Vienna 32 (−30) · 13. Espada Madrid 32 (−30) · 14. Black Army Budapest 26 · 15. Hussars FC Warsaw 21 · 16. FC Sipp Dortmund 17
World 2: 1. Spicey Boys Barranco 77 · 2. Astral Amsterdam 69 · 3. Cape Town Storm 66 · 4. King Cobra Jakarta 54 · 5. Amazonia Manaus 47 · 6. Halicspor Istanbul 43 · 7. Fiko Tunis 41 (−4) · 8. Atlas Marrakech 39 · 9. Nottingham Arrows 36 · 10. Diamonds Amsterdam 35 · 11. Adria Split 33 (+2) · 12. Union Santiago 33 (−6) · 13. Tomis Constanta 32 · 14. Gladiator Milan 31 · 15. Munich Butterfly 24 · 16. Detroit Motors 24
World 3: 1. Bania Craiova 56 · 2. Oresund Copenhagen 53 · 3. Jökull Reykjavik 50 · 4. Hammer Hamburg 49 · 5. Trakia Plovdiv 44 · 6. Azure Chefchaouen 42 · 7. Kingston Barracudas 41 · 8. Étoile Nantes 41 (−5) · 9. Plymouth Sea Dogs 40 (+8) · 10. Ashwaganda Ahlen 40 (−7) · 11. Jalisco Guadalajara 38 · 12. Lusitania Lisbon 37 · 13. Aberdeen Bad Boys 34 · 14. Kaunas Tauras 33 · 15. Shanghai Dragons FC 33 (−15) · 16. Hyderabad Vikings 20
Countries: Argentina — Juventud · Belgium — Europe · Canada — Red Kings · China — Dragons FC · Colombia — Sporting Unicosta · England — United · Spain — Trovadores · France — Union Maritime · Germany — Adler · Ireland — Shannon Athletic · Italy — Vittoria · Japan — Naniwa · Mexico — Mayab · Portugal — Bravos Açorianos · Scotland — Rovers · USA — United. Qualifiers → World 3: Vittoria Verona, Juventud Buenos Aires, Naniwa Osaka, Mayab Merida, CD Volcán, Galaxy Vilnius. Friendly Ranking podium: Galaxy Vilnius 164 · Juventud 122 · Avala 101; wildcards to three clubs, unresolved.
Golden Boot: Hooman Moslehi (Banatul) — 19, for a club that finished fourth, in a division whose top two scorers both wore the same shirt. Record watch: retiring class second-largest ever, 396 → 408; friendly ranking points 147 → 164 (Galaxy Vilnius); transfer fee 8,942 → 10,001 (Höfler), still behind Luján's 15,000; Cilloni retires still the most-capped active player in the game at the time he stopped, 374; Kontao's career reds, sixteen → eighteen. Still behind glass: the 86-point and 30-match-unbeaten World 3 season, the 109-goal season, the 10-0, the fifteen-goal match, Ojeda short of 250 and climbing, and a Belgian league that debuted this year and already has a club unbeaten at home in double figures.
Season 14 opens with Wild Roses chasing a fourth title in four years; with Raiders sending Sasu and Rățulea into retirement together and needing new legs at the back; with Spicey Boys defending World 2 against an Astral side six points back; with Bania defending a first title anyone at the club can remember; with Vittoria, Juventud, Naniwa, Mayab, CD Volcán and Galaxy Vilnius arriving in World League 3, one of them a season-old club that beat two country champions to get there; with Ojeda on 240 and Ihrig and Tineo both on 223; and with a goalkeeper in Seattle on eighteen career reds who shows no sign of stopping. Do not change the channel.
