Footballing Seminarians Are Too Damn Darn Rowdy

It’s Clericus Cup time again in Italy! You remember the Clericus Cup, don’t you? It’s a Vatican-hosted football tournament attracts teams of clerics and seminarians from all over the world, with varying degrees of football skills. There are teams with smatterings of former youth players, but there are also a lot of aging, fat guys who adore the game but, you know, are better at praying than they are at settling the ball. (Here’s some great footage from last year’s Cup.)

None of that stops the part-time players and full-time men of the cloth from getting really into their football, though — there was already a day of matches that featured three red cards, and now the neighbors are starting to complain about the noise.

It seems just cheering isn’t enough for the supporters of these teams of those close to the holy — there are songs (often in Latin), megaphones, trumpets, drums and, of course, the old standby of every passionate fan, the ghetto blaster. Officials are threatening to ban supporters from matches if they don’t stop being so freaking … supportive, but the fans of defending champs Redemptoris Mater Seminary insist they’re going to keep singing hymns before each match, and it’s probably going to be equally hard to get fans of Rome’s North American College to stop singing doo wap (You could not make this stuff up.) during matches. (As you may have heard, the Lord works in mysterious ways.)

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Category: World Football

Tags: Clericus Cup, World Football

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