Larry Brown Sports

Every time executives from the Chicago Cubs or Detroit Lions organizations grow tired of hearing their fans complain, they should just be grateful they have access to their offices when they show up for work. As a group of fans who support the Australian soccer club Rapid Wien reminded us over the weekend, that is not always a given.

According to Suedkurier.com, fans built a brick wall in front of the team’s office in Vienna over the weekend after a loss to rivals Red Bull Salzburg. They also attached a photo to of Rapid Wien manager Werner Kuhn to the cinder blocks with a caption that read “I’m not allowed in.”

Not exactly subtle, but this is the type of stuff we are used to seeing from soccer fans. Brick wall outside the team’s office, phone call to the police because of a bad call, violent protest against pink jerseys — what’s the difference?

H/T Deadspin

Manchester United lost a heartbreaker to Real Madrid on Tuesday, and a controversial red card could be to blame. Man. U took a 1-0 lead in the 48th minute when Sergio Ramos scored an own goal, but the lead did not last very long. In the 56th minute, referee Cuneyt Cakir gave Manchester’s Luis Nani a red card. Real Madrid went on to score two goals unanswered goals after Nani was disqualified and won the match.

Nani stuck out his leg to try to control a ball that was flying about chest-high, when Real Madrid’s Alvaro Arbeloa also came in to try and make a play. Nani wound up kicking Arbeloa in the midsection, but it appeared that both men were playing the ball. Despite the fact that the contact was clearly inadvertent, the referee gave Nani a red card and forced Man. U to have to play the remainder of the match one man down.

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A first-division soccer match in Argentina was suspended Wednesday after fans threw explosives on the field, creating a dangerous situation for the players.

According to the Associated Press, Belgrano was leading Independiente 1-0 when the game was suspended at the end of the first half because of the explosives. The AP reports that the explosives appeared to be launched from the Independiente fan section (the match was played at Independiente’s home stadium).

Belgrano goalkeeper Juan Carlos Olaveon saw an explosive land less than 10 feet from him. The video above shows him with his hand held to his left ear.

It would be one thing is this is an isolated incident, but this is not the first time explosives have been thrown into a soccer match.

Many sports teams did what they could to raise awareness for breast cancer during the month of October, but one soccer team’s attempt to do their part went terribly wrong.

Fans of the Venezuelan soccer team Deportivo Tachira stormed the pitch and refused to leave for at least 30 minutes before the team’s game against Atletico Venezuela on Sunday because they were upset Tachira was wearing pink uniforms instead of their traditional yellow and black kits. The pink uniforms were worn in support of Senos Ayuda Foundation — a non-profit cancer charity — and part of the team’s contribution to Breast Cancer Awareness.

A group of fans reportedly began waving their replica jerseys over their heads and chanted about “defending their colors” before going onto the field where they were penned in by riot police. After their protest lasted for over 30 minutes, the players were taken off the field and the game was suspended.

The team had been promoting the cancer awareness theme in the week leading up to the game. The Deportivo Tachira Twitter account continuously used a “#JuntosPorUnaNobleCausa” (translation: together for a noble cause) hashtag on their tweets all week. They also were giving free admission to the game (except the lower level of the stadium) to women wearing pink.

Congratulations, soccer fans, you’ve done it once again. We’ve seen soccer fans protest games in the past for really dumb reasons, and we’ve even seen a soccer fan killed for a really stupid reason. This horrible error in judgment ranks right up there with all of those awful stories.

You can see some of the photos from the incident in the beginning of this video:

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People can be really, really sick sometimes. It takes a certain type of nut job to toss firecrackers onto a soccer field. It takes an even more disturbed person to throw them directly at a player who is receiving medical treatment, but that’s exactly what happened during a match between Anorthosis and Omonia Nicosia on Sunday.

As you can see from the video above that Dirty Tackle shared with us, a player was down on the turf with team doctors gathered around him when some sort of explosive came flying in and blew up right in the face of several people. As we saw when a player nearly lost his hand last month, the idea of soccer fans throwing dangerous objects on the field is nothing new. Throwing them directly into a pack of people like that — especially when someone is injured — is as dangerous as it gets.

A near disaster was barely avoided during a recent soccer match between Iranian side Sepahan and Saudi Arabian side Al-Ahli. Play was briefly interrupted in the first half after a fan threw an object onto the field and the referees went over to remove it. Sepahan midfielder Adel Kolahkaj ended up picking up the object and tossing it off the field, and as you can see from the video above it turned out to be an explosive.

Had Kolahkaj held onto the object for a few seconds longer or picked it up a few seconds later, he would have lost a hand. The match was initially called off but play resumed after security officials conducted an inspection.

We’ve seen soccer fans do some crazy things like bring a dead body to a match of throw tennis balls onto the pitch in protest, but this completely crosses the line. Then again, soccer fans have been known to cross the line on plenty of occasions.

H/T Yardbarker

Last Wednesday, a group of more than 400 Athletic Bilbao fans were looking forward to traveling to Budapest, Hungary to cheer on their squad in the Europa League final against La Liga rival Atletico. When they arrived in Budapest, they were suddenly no longer excited. That’s because the game was being played in Bucharest, Romania.

According to the Metro, the mob of fans mixed up the names of the cities Budapest and Bucharest and ended up hundreds of miles from where the Europa League final was taking place. As if that wasn’t bad enough, they could not locate Bucharest — the capital of Romania — on a map when they scrambled and tried to make it to the correct venue.

If it is any consolation to the Bilbao fans, their team suffered an embarrassing 3-0 defeat. If they didn’t already buy their tickets, they’re probably happy the mix-up took place. If they already had tickets — which is highly likely — the loss merely added insult to injury.

For what it’s worth, the stadium announcer even made the mistake of saying “Good evening, Budapest, and welcome to the Europa League final” over the loudspeaker before the game. That dude was in the right place and still didn’t know where he was. That may be worse. As this female tennis player can tell you, there’s nothing more stressful than a venue mishap.

H/T Sports by Brooks Live