The DanFootball Gazette — Season 15 Retrospective

Act I — The Invincibles of Edmonton

Write it down somewhere permanent. Wild Roses Edmonton are champions of World League 1 without losing a single match: 30 played, 25 won, 5 drawn, 0 lost, 89 scored, 12 conceded, 80 points. In fifteen seasons of top-flight football, nobody had ever done it. Not the Raiders of the seven titles. Not Sharks. Not last year's Spicey Boys, who conceded nine goals and still lost twice. The only unbeaten season in any world league before this one belonged to Spicey Boys in World 3, back in Season 12. Wild Roses did it two floors higher, against people who were actually trying.

And it started like a hangover. Round 1: 1-1 at Nordlys, with a penalty against them in the second minute. Round 2: 0-0 at home to the champions. Round 3: 1-1 at Raiders, where Stafford scored a penalty in the 81st minute and Aquilino Fariña equalised in the 82nd. Sixty seconds, and the whole season turned on them. After three rounds the future invincibles were eleventh. Then they won thirteen in a row. Then they drew 0-0 at Adria, so nobody would get bored. Then they won thirteen in a row again. Two thirteen-match winning streaks in one season, separated by one goalless afternoon in Split.

Against the other three clubs in the top four they played six times: three wins, three draws, two goals conceded. The title was sealed in Round 28, Wild Roses 1-0 Raiders, Benaboud in the eighth minute. One round later they went to Barranco, a ground where the champions had not lost a single league match all last season, and won 2-0, apparently on principle. At home: fourteen wins and one draw, that 0-0 with Spicey in Round 2. Away: eleven wins, four draws, no defeats. For the scrapbook: 7-0 against Pacific (Fariña four, two from the spot), 7-0 at Banatul, 7-2 against Pyramids and then 4-0 at Pyramids in the very next round, and 6-1 against Hussars twice, home and away, for symmetry.

• Fifth title (Seasons 2, 11, 12, 13 and 15), four of them in the last five years. Raiders still lead the all-time count with seven, and they have started counting backwards nervously.
• 80 points, joint third-highest in World 1 history, behind Raiders' 83 and 81 and level with Raiders' 80 from Season 4.
• 46 league matches unbeaten and counting. The last defeat was 0-1 at Pyramids in Round 14 of Season 14. Pyramids have been dining out on it ever since and lost 7-2 and 4-0 to them this year as the bill.
• Aquilino Fariña, 24: 18 goals. Meinrad Ludwig, 23: 14 assists and exactly one goal, which his teammates will not let him forget. Roland Tóth, 33, added 14.
• The veterans: Milosz Kolasa, 32, five appearances, two goals, 120 for the career. Vlaho Jambrović, 35, zero appearances, still registered, still on 367, and in excellent shape for a man who did not play.
• Friendlies, because they cannot help themselves: 31-2-1, 110 scored, 12 conceded.

Act II — Silver, bronze and tin, one point apart

Spicey Boys 70, Sharks 69, Raiders 68. Three clubs, three points, and a Wild Roses-shaped crater ten points above them. A year ago any of those totals would have been a title bid. This year they were a queue.

Spicey Boys Barranco (22-4-4, 71:23) defended their crown the way a man defends an umbrella in a hurricane: bravely, and in vain. Barranco, where visitors scored three goals in the whole of Season 14, saw two home defeats this time, 2-3 to Raiders and 0-2 to the champions, plus 1-2 at Raiders and 1-3 at Sharks. Luca Barsotti, last year's 29-goal Golden Boot, scored 14: exactly half, still a decent season, and a source of quiet panic in the analytics department. The goals that did arrive were bought on opening day: Miguel Mancebo, 20, signed for 11,000 credits and scored 16, the club's top scorer at roughly 690 credits a goal. In friendlies they went 32-3-1, 111 scored, 10 conceded. The football that does not count remains their favourite kind.

Gold Coast Sharks (22-3-5, 84:22) produced the two most violent rounds of the season. Round 15: Sharks 6-0 Raiders. Round 16: Raiders 1-4 Sharks. Ten goals to one against the seven-time champions in consecutive rounds. They also lost 0-1 at home to Hussars and 0-1 at home to Banatul, which is the Sharks method in full: humiliate a giant on Tuesday, trip over the doormat on Wednesday. Virgilio Luján: 22 league goals and 30 friendlies, 52 for the year, 151 for the career. Zlatan Kovacic, bought for 8,500, scored zero league goals; the accountants have requested a meeting and a glass of water. In friendlies, once again, nobody beat them: 32-2-0, a second unbeaten friendly season in a row.

Bucharest Raiders (21-5-4, 82:22) finished fourth for the second year running, which for a club with seven titles is the footballing equivalent of being asked for ID at the door. In Round 2 they won 6-0 at Bania, with Fankélé Niakasso scoring four before half-time (3', 14', 27' pen, 41'), and in Round 29 they beat the same Bania 8-0. Fourteen goals to nil against one opponent in two visits. Most of the rest of the season they spent losing to Sharks.

Act III — Two hundred and fifty

For a whole year this newspaper signed off the same way: Ojeda, 249. We can stop now. Round 7, Raiders 4-0 Jökull, 36th minute: Hector Ojeda opens the scoring and becomes the first player in the history of the game to reach 250 career goals. Nobody else has ever got there.

He did not stop to celebrate for long. Eight league goals at 36, two of them in one afternoon against Adria, and the last one in the first minute of the 8-0 against Bania. Career total: 257. He is 37 now and registered for Season 16, and this column has given up predicting his retirement, because it keeps being wrong and he keeps scoring. Behind him the queue: Hilmar Ihrig of Kaiser, 35, 14 goals this season (four of them in one afternoon, 7-2 at Tomis) and 245 for the career; Aníbal Tineo of FC Dacia, 232, who scored once all season, for reasons explained in Act V.

A second milestone, quieter but just as stubborn: Matthias Baudet of Hussars, 35, played his 400th match on the opening night, Hussars 2-0 FC Dacia. In Round 18 he scored in the first minute at Imperial, the only goal of the game. He now has 428 appearances and 18 goals, so the 400th match came with a free gift seventeen rounds later.

Act IV — The Adria hurricane, and a goalkeeper reaches twenty-one

Adria Split, promoted as World 2 runners-up, finished fifth with 60 points and led the league in Rounds 6, 9, 10 and 11, the last club to sit on top before Wild Roses locked the door. On the second day of the season they paid 13,500 credits for Nils Dünnwald, 22 — the third-largest fee in the game's history, behind only Kuster's 16,000 and Luján's 15,000 — and he scored 19 in 24, including five in Lions FC 0-8 Adria (54', 66', 70', 83', 90+1'), the biggest win of the World 1 season. Two rounds earlier Fabien Begin scored four at Bania, three of them after the 84th minute in a 5-3 win. Gusztáv Esterházy cost 8,300 and scored three. Nobody is perfect, and Adria clearly have a budget nobody else knows about.

Juan Leite, 23, of Seattle Pacific: 23 goals and the World 1 Golden Boot, four of them in a 5-0 over Nordlys. His goalkeeper, Tianjama Kontao, collected career red card number twenty-one: second yellow, 68th minute, Pacific 5-2 Banatul. The Gazette has run out of ways to ask him to stop and is now simply counting. Banatul's Roland Käser scored four in a 4-0 at Dacia, and Krunoslav Bekavac, 33, added ten more for 186 in his career. Hussars, last year's World 2 champions, survived in tenth. Nordlys scored 15 goals in thirty matches and finished eleventh, comfortably, which tells you most of what you need to know about the three clubs below them.

Act V — The fall of the house of Dacia

FC Dacia Brasov have been relegated for the first time in their history. Founding members. Fifteen seasons in World League 1, every single one of them. Runners-up in Seasons 2 and 3, third four more times. This season: 4 wins, 7 draws, 19 defeats, and 11 goals scored, the joint second-lowest total the top flight has ever seen (Hussars managed 10 in Season 13), with ten defeats in a row and eighteen matches without a win. Aníbal Tineo, the man with 232 career goals, scored once in 23 appearances. And on the way out, Sandu Erimescu retired after 409 appearances, the most of anyone in this year's retiring class. He switched off the lights in Brasov, and nobody had the heart to switch them back on.

Imperial Tokyo go down with them, after fourteen straight seasons in World 1, every season since Season 2. They finished 4-11-15 with 16 goals and eleven draws, the most in the division. Imperial did not crash out of the top flight. They drew their way out, one polite point at a time.

And Bania Craiova, the lift with the cable cut. World 3 champions in Season 13, third in World 2 in Season 14, sixteenth in World 1 in Season 15: 14 points and 95 goals conceded, the second-highest total in top-flight history after Atlantico's 97. Twenty-two matches without a win. Raiders scored fourteen against them in two visits. Bania did win three times, 4-1 at Hussars and 1-0 against both Dacia and Hussars late in the season, so Hussars will want a quiet word about who exactly they lose to.

Act VI — World 2: Astral lose their last two and win the league

Picture it. Round 29: Astral lose 1-2 at Halicspor. Round 30, final day, at home: Astral 0-1 Trakia, a penalty in the 27th minute. Two defeats to finish the season, and Astral Amsterdam are champions of World 2 by one point, because Galaxy lost 0-2 at Amazonia in Round 29 and their final-day 2-0 over Halicspor arrived exactly one point too late. 63 to 62. Astral led from Round 9 to the end with the best attack in the division, 74 goals. Emre Yavuz scored 20, four of them in a 6-1 over King Cobra; Ducrocq added 16 and Huata 12. Not the most elegant way to lift a trophy, but the trophy does not ask.

Now the bit our regular readers have been waiting for. Astral have played four top-flight seasons, in Seasons 2, 4, 11 and 14, and been relegated from all four. Season 16 will be the fifth attempt. The lift has been serviced, the cables checked, the button polished. The engineers make no promises.

Galaxy Vilnius go up with them: the Lithuanian league in Season 13, World 3 champions in Season 14, World 2 runners-up in Season 15, and World League 1 in Season 16. Three seasons, three promotions, 11-4-0 at home, 18 conceded. Spicey Boys climbed the same staircase with three trophies; Galaxy are doing it with a more relaxed attitude to first place. Nottingham Arrows are third and promoted with 26 goals in thirty matches, the best defence in the division (14 conceded) and twelve draws, which means they went up by refusing to lose and refusing, just as firmly, to score.

Going down: King Cobra (22 points, twenty defeats), Hammer (back to World 3 after a single season), and Espada Madrid, founding members of World 1 and in the top flight for fourteen seasons until last year, now relegated twice in two years. Next season, Madrid plays in World League 3. Kaiser, last year's 12-point record-breakers, survived in thirteenth. Black Army drew seventeen times, which is less a style of play than a lifestyle.

Act VII — World 3: Atlas bounce back, Sea Dogs go silent

Atlas Marrakech, relegated from World 2 a year ago, are champions of World 3 with 58 points (16-10-4) and go straight back up, with Walter Rigby scoring 22 for the World 3 Golden Boot. Detroit Motors (52, ten home wins) and Diamonds Amsterdam (52, also relegated last year) go up with them. Diamonds went 13-0-2 at home and 3-4-8 away: one club, two personalities, one passport.

And then there are Plymouth Sea Dogs. They led the division for ten rounds. They were unbeaten away from home all season (5-10-0). And then came the last six matches: 0-0, 0-0, 0-0, 0-0, 0-0, 0-0. Six goalless draws in a row to end the season, a run this newspaper checked twice and still does not quite believe. They finished fourth, four points short of promotion, with fifteen draws in total. Somewhere in Plymouth, a scoreboard operator was paid for six days of work and never touched a button.

At the other extreme, Oresund scored 72 and conceded 72, the best attack and the worst defence in the same shirt, including a 6-5 against Diamonds. Hangang FC Seoul played thirty matches and saw 26 goals in total, at both ends. Oresund saw 144. Same division, different sports. Going down to their country leagues: Europe Brussels (who won 10-0 in Praia only a year ago), Al Najd, Wellington Harbour, Asteras, Mayab, and Étoile Nantes, who played in World League 1 in Season 1 and now head home to France for a third time. Of last season's seven qualifiers, three survived (Leman, Pokrok and Hangang) and four went straight back.

Act VIII — Belgium: the champions nobody owned

United Waregem won the Belgian league without losing a match: three wins, three draws, 12 points. They did it with nobody in the office. Their chairman left on the second day of the season, and the players simply carried on, like a band that keeps playing after the owner of the ship has gone ashore. The music stopped in the qualifiers, 1-1 at home and 0-4 in Accra, and the club was disbanded at the transition. Champions of Belgium, retired undefeated in their own league. Their players have since gone to the pool, where the Belgian title does not appear on the price tag.

Act IX — The qualifiers: six seats, and a ghost from Season 1

Six places in World League 3, and the best story belongs to a name from the very first page of this newspaper. Oxygen Montreal played in World League 1 in Season 1, finished last, and have spent the past four seasons in Canada. They are back. Round 2: Cardiff beaten on penalties. Round 3: 0-1 down to Jelgava after the first leg, 4-0 at home in the second. Final round: a 1-0 away win at Aberdeen Bad Boys. Oxygen are breathing again.

• Accra Stars (Ghana) went through four rounds with an aggregate of 19-5: 4-1, 5-1 (Waregem, see above), 5-1, and 5-2 against Avala. Their goalkeeper, Kharyton Haidai, 19, cost 7,000 credits during the season.
• CD Volcán de Quito, relegated from World 3 a year ago, came straight back with six clean sheets in six legs from Round 2 to the final.
• AC Vesuvio Napoli, Italian champions with 46 points, beat Spanish champions Trovadores Granada on penalties, 5-3, after both clubs won 1-0 away from home. Trovadores had won Spain 10-1-1 with 28 scored and 3 conceded, and had already escaped Round 3 by losing 0-2 at home to Busan and winning 3-0 in Busan.
• Aronsson Academy Gothenburg, the only club in the Swedish league, went through three rounds with three identical aggregates: 3-1, 3-1, 3-1. Football by photocopier.
• Vltava Prague beat Berserkers, Garabaaley and, in the final round, Shanghai Dragons 3-2.

For the record books of pain: Honka Espoo lost 0-12 on aggregate to Kaunas Tauras (0-5 at home, 0-7 away), Avala beat Sydney Kookaburras 9-1, Shanghai Dragons won 6-0 in Hyderabad for a 10-1 aggregate, and Esil Astana put ten past Harimau Selatan over two legs. Remember that last one. Last year's wildcards: Aberdeen Bad Boys used theirs and reached the final round; Jalisco and Vesuvio did not need them.

Act X — The friendlies: Harimau Selatan and the long road

Knocked out of the qualifiers in Round 1, 10-4 on aggregate, Harimau Selatan Johor Bahru went home and won the friendlies. 109 ranking points from 62 matches: 31 wins, 16 draws, 15 defeats, 144 scored and 100 conceded. Revenge, Malaysian style: patiently, sixty-two times. CD Volcán were second with 102, and Galaxy third with 101 from only 38 matches. The giants barely played and won nearly everything: Spicey Boys 32-3-1, Sharks 32-2-0, Wild Roses 31-2-1, sixth, seventh and eighth, losing the ranking to clubs that simply turned up more often.

144 series, every one completed; 4,416 friendly goals (5,777 last year). The top scorer was Cédric Piteira of Osaka Naniwa with 33, ahead of Luján's 30. Wildcards for next season's qualifiers go to Atlantico Porto, Jalisco Guadalajara and Shanghai Dragons.

Act XI — Mercato: fewer deals, twice the money

89 transfers, 210,118 credits. Last season there were more deals (114) and less than half the money (93,178). Twenty-nine players went at fixed price and seven were sold by their own owners. The invoice table:

• Nils Dünnwald, 13,500, to Adria. 19 goals. Worth every credit, and Adria would like that noted.
• Miguel Mancebo, 11,000, to Spicey Boys. 16 goals.
• Zlatan Kovacic, 8,500, to Sharks. Zero league goals. See Act II, and the glass of water.
• Gusztáv Esterházy, 8,300, to Adria at auction. Three goals.
• Rikard Kramar, 19, 7,500, to Ras Al Khor Dubai, a club alone in its league. Kramar will play friendlies and qualifiers and, for the rest of the week, practise finishing against nobody.
• Patrick Major, 7,310, to Trakia; Kharyton Haidai, 7,000, to Accra Stars, who then went up (Act IX); Taiga Chinen, 6,565, to Spicey Boys.

Corrections desk: last year this column called Luján's 15,000 the most expensive transfer ever. It is not. Meinrad Kuster went to Sharks for 16,000 at fixed price in Season 10, and still holds the record. The intern responsible has been moved to the friendlies desk, where he counts goals and is happy.

Act XII — Crime blotter: the referees discover the yellow card

This was the first full season under the revised card rules, and it shows. Red cards, or a stretcher with no substitutes left, in 493 of 2,938 matches: 17%, down from 31% a year ago (1,013 of 3,236). In the three world leagues, 107 red cards in 720 matches. Penalties: 1,114 awarded, 836 scored. The new prisoner of the year is Nico Berend, Munich Butterfly's goalkeeper, with three red cards and ten yellows, the most reds of anyone. Discipline is down across the game. Goalkeepers remain the exception, and Kontao (Act IV) remains the chairman of the club.

Act XIII — Births and farewells

The country leagues crowned their own: Trovadores Granada in Spain, AC Vesuvio in Italy, Union Maritime in France, FC Krefeld in Germany, Atlantico in Portugal, Glasgow Thistle in Scotland, Oxygen in Canada, and Annapolis Blue Crab Stew in the United States, which is a club, a title and a dinner all at once. In England, Headingley, United Enfield and Rochdale AFC all finished on 16 points, Headingley and United were level on goal difference too, and Headingley took the title on goals scored, 15 to 11. Two brand-new clubs won their league at the first attempt: Sydney Kookaburras in Australia and Berserkers Tromsø in Norway.

The retiring class numbers 489, the largest in the game's history, finally beating the founding 486 of Season 1. Leading them out: Heinrich Weber of Espada, 37, 407 appearances and 109 goals, the highest-scoring player ever to retire, leaving on the same day Madrid drops to World 3; Sandu Erimescu of FC Dacia, 35, 409 appearances (Act V); Birkir Elíasson of Jökull, 358; Augustin Dărăbanț of Raiders, 36, 327 appearances, 46 goals and 84 assists; and Horia Ignat of Banatul, 319. Hector Ojeda is not on the list. Of course he is not.

New for Season 16: Peña Bufanda Vigo in Spain and Manchester FC in England. Disbanded: United Waregem (Act VIII).

Final standings

World 1: 1. Wild Roses Edmonton 80 · 2. Spicey Boys Barranco 70 · 3. Gold Coast Sharks 69 · 4. Bucharest Raiders 68 · 5. Adria Split 60 · 6. Seattle Pacific 46 · 7. Banatul Timisoara 45 · 8. Lions FC Lagos 34 · 9. Cape Town Storm 33 · 10. Hussars FC Warsaw 30 · 11. Nordlys IF Oslo 27 · 12. Jökull Reykjavik 26 (−29) · 13. Pyramids Giza 26 (−42) · 14. Imperial Tokyo 23 · 15. FC Dacia Brasov 19 · 16. Bania Craiova 14

World 2: 1. Astral Amsterdam 63 · 2. Galaxy Vilnius 62 · 3. Nottingham Arrows 48 · 4. Halicspor Istanbul 46 · 5. Amazonia Manaus 45 · 6. Black Army Budapest 44 · 7. Union Santiago 42 · 8. Trakia Plovdiv 41 · 9. Fiko Tunis 40 · 10. FC Sipp Dortmund 37 · 11. Juventud Buenos Aires 35 · 12. Tomis Constanta 33 (−18) · 13. Kaiser Vienna 33 (−22) · 14. Hammer Hamburg 28 · 15. Espada Madrid 25 · 16. King Cobra Jakarta 22

World 3: 1. Atlas Marrakech 58 · 2. Detroit Motors 52 (+27) · 3. Diamonds Amsterdam 52 (+20) · 4. Plymouth Sea Dogs 48 · 5. Kingston Barracudas 45 · 6. Munich Butterfly 44 · 7. Oresund Copenhagen 43 · 8. Pokrok Kosice 42 · 9. Hangang FC Seoul 40 (−2) · 10. FC Leman Geneva 40 (−9) · 11. Europe Brussels 38 · 12. Al Najd Riyadh 31 · 13. Wellington Harbour 30 · 14. Étoile Nantes 28 (−10) · 15. Mayab Merida 28 (−36) · 16. Asteras Rhodes 24

Qualifiers → World 3: AC Vesuvio Napoli, Accra Stars, Aronsson Academy Gothenburg, CD Volcán de Quito, Oxygen Montreal and Vltava Prague. Friendly Ranking podium: Harimau Selatan Johor Bahru 109 · CD Volcán de Quito 102 · Galaxy Vilnius 101; wildcards to Atlantico Porto, Jalisco Guadalajara and Shanghai Dragons. Disbanded: United Waregem.

Golden Boots: Juan Leite (Pacific) 23 in World 1, Emre Yavuz (Astral) 20 in World 2, Walter Rigby (Atlas) 22 in World 3. Record watch: first unbeaten season in World 1 history (Wild Roses, 25-5-0); first player to 250 career goals (Ojeda, now 257); retiring class, 486 → 489, a new record; highest-scoring retiree ever (Weber, 109); third-largest fee ever (Dünnwald, 13,500); second-most goals conceded in a World 1 season (Bania, 95); joint second-fewest scored (FC Dacia, 11); transfer credits in a season, 93,178 → 210,118. New categories: two thirteen-match winning streaks in one season (Wild Roses); six consecutive 0-0 draws (Sea Dogs). Still behind glass: the 10-0, the fifteen-goal match, Kuster's 16,000, and Raiders' 83 points.

Season 16 opens with Wild Roses unbeaten in 46 league matches and nobody quite sure how to stop them; with Spicey Boys, Sharks and Raiders separated by two points and a grudge; with Ojeda on 257 at 37 and Ihrig on 245 at 36; with Astral back in World 1 for a fifth attempt and Galaxy arriving for their first; with FC Dacia, Imperial and Bania in World 2 and Espada in World 3; with Oxygen Montreal back in the world leagues after four seasons at home; and with the referees still holding the yellow card, for now. Do not change the channel.