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Get bogged down in swamp soccer - 16th October 2023

Despite being one of the most frequently played and best loved sports, in Finland an idiosyncratic version of football has developed – instead of being played on tarmac or turf, it's conducted in a swamp.

One of the Swamp Soccer World Cup coordinators is Jussi Kiiskila.

Jussi Kiiskila: "Swamp soccer was invented back in 1998. Basically, most of the top Finnish cross-country skiers used to train in the summer in the swamp area because it's very good exercise for the, for the fitness. And here in Hyrynsalmi a skier came up with the crazy idea of combining football and skiing, and you know the first competition was held in 1998, near Hyrynsalmi, with 13 teams."

As swamp soccer is unquestionably more demanding, only the fittest of contestants participate, but to compensate, the match length has been drastically slashed, so one game consists of just two 10-minute halves. The teams are also a shrunken version of their normal selves, comprising a six-player line-up on each team – with the goalie included – playing at any given time.

While the principles of the sport are unchanged, Siri, from Finnish team Lahen Stolit, notes typical dilemmas they contend with.

Siri: "Well, we just play kind of soccer in the swamp. Obviously, we get stuck on the swamp and we lose our shoes in the swamp and so on. But we just try to get the ball into the goal. That's the main purpose."

The World Championships' varied categories, together with the range in playing fields are a draw for visiting teams such as the German swamp soccer champs, Jugendclub Lindenau. Newcomers to Finland, they left with their heads held high after taking gold in the men's professional category.

Member of German team Jugendclub Lindenau: "The fields are really different to soccer. Every field, like here, is different. Some, like, really dry and some are really the swamp, and you sink in, like, the whole body and you need to crawl."

Delineating the confines of the pitch itself are white boundary lines, and outside these, enthusiastic spectators escape the quagmire by perching on wooden plank walkways. 140 teams, female as well as male, hurled themselves about the swampy fields in this year's tournament, and it's anticipated that by the next event, numbers will have sprung back to pre-Covid-19 levels – 200-250 teams.

With swamp football squads amounting to 300, from all over the world, might you get a kick out of signing up for a wallow in a bog?

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