Gold goes to the ruskies; 10^th annual tournament otherwise a huge success, but future looks uncertain.

An international capacity crowd of football fanatics witnessed Sputnik Samara from Russia take the title 2-0 at the Swamp Arena against Kuusamon Futaajat from Finland, in a proper old-school swamp-thriller. Länsi-Porin Gepardi, also from Finland, was awarded some bronze metal.

Despite all the excitement created by the successful tournament , it seemed that everyone was talking about the split within the organizers and NOT the actual hard core endurance football played in the (knee-)deep swamps. In the past the annual tournament has been organized by Kainuun Paronit ry, a non profit organization together with the kunta* of Hyrynsalmi, which owns the Swamp Football World Cup brand. The whole Swamp Footballing world has been caught in the speculation of exactly how the split will affect the quality of the 2008 tournament.

The unfortunate beef dates back to the 2005 event preliminaries where the home team Kainuun Paronit was dominating their Brazilian opponents. With 5 minutes left to play, neither team had managed to score despite the hosts coming close several times. With everyone having their eyes fixed so closely on the Brazilian end, no one noticed how the Finnish center back and goalie both sunk in to the swamp and disappeared from sight completely. As the game went to extended time the Brazilian defense managed to steal the ball and pass it to swamp football icon Fabio, who suddenly found himself alone in front of the hosts now empty net. Fabio scored an absolute stunner of a goal in from 3 meters away and so it was Brazil who took the win.

Needless to say the home team had nothing left to do but to protest furiously, demanding for the goal to be disallowed for offside. The referee however made a controversial decision and let the goal stand as he stated that according to the position where the Finnish defender was last seen standing, the Brazilian was onside when the pass had occurred. The bitter home team filed a protest claiming that the referee who also had ties to with the local board of tourism had intentionally misinterpreted the rules.

(*) kunta = municipality