Socker Slam: How the USA reinvented soccer – Soccer on cocaine

When Kevin de Bruyne left the pitch after the game against Tottenham a few years ago, he was simply frustrated. It wasn't just that his team, Manchester City, had lost 2-0 - it was the manner of the defeat that left him shaking his head. Sure, Manchester City are looking for consistency, but some of the refereeing decisions in particular left him almost speechless: "To be honest, I don't know the rules anymore." Whether it was handball or not, Kevin De Bruyne didn't even know on what basis this should be discussed, because the IFAB rule enforcers had changed the rules far too often in recent years in their search for the perfect game.

Yet the search for the perfect game may have long since ended. Because the perfect game was invented 25 years ago. In the USA, of course. It's loud, it's vulgar, it's untamable: It's Socker Slam.

Pablo Maurer once wrote the story for TheAthletic . Even if the term "story" is an understatement, it is, after all, an epic. At its center is entrepreneur Terry Rich, who worked as a manager for a cable television company in the early 2000s. "I realized that if I wanted to make money long-term, I would have to do a TV show," Rich told TheAthletic . And as he looked at the most popular TV programs at the time, he noticed that most Americans tuned in to watch wrestling. "I thought, man, I should do that."

Because the wrestling market at the time was saturated with multiple associations contracting the best wrestlers, Rich tried to put a new spin on the sport. So he simply invented a new sport. "The tricks of football, the hardcore action of ice hockey, and as many points as basketball" - that was the promise Rich and his fellow "Socker Slam" members made to their viewers. Thanks to research by TheAthletic , long-lost film tapes of this absurd TV show have now resurfaced.

One shows the rival teams of the New York Bruisers and LA Surf clashing after the Bruisers – according to the script – won the championship the previous year after a, well, dubious move. At the last second, the LA Surf keeper was tackled to the side, the Bruisers scored into the empty net, and the referees weren't looking at that crucial moment – it can happen. Scenes that make you think Hulk Hogan and the Undertaker have come home from a European tour and invented a new sport. As if the American Gladiator had won a trial with Hamburger SV. Or as LA Surf legend Logan "The Full Monty" Montgomery put it: "It was soccer on cocaine."

In an attempt to Americanize the boring game of soccer, Terry Rich and his friends invented increasingly absurd rules and scenarios, which they then implemented on the field based on a loose script. For example, in the final minutes, they threw a second ball, called a "slam ball," into the ring. The team that scored with this ball received two points. This was nothing compared to the six points awarded to the team that hit an opponent's buttocks. And almost anything was allowed.

Rich explained it this way: "We were sitting around Krispy Kreme donuts, and I thought, 'Come on, I'll say the most ridiculous things that come to mind and see what happens.'" The result was that player Luc Cisna received a brown card after the referee caught him farting in the middle of the arena. Over the course of two days, the crew filmed four games in a converted hockey rink, which would then be sold to TV stations in the States.

The journalist Pablo Maurer revealed many other absurd stories about Socker Slam, which can be read in full here , and does not forget to mention the journey through time that the audience experiences today, including questionable comments from the reporters about the cheerleaders' outfits and lived out fantasies of violence.

The fact that the sport unfortunately never achieved its breakthrough was likely due in part to the ratings. Fox Sports World showed each episode exactly once – the madness was only seen in about 15,000 households. Shortly afterward, it ended. Memories remain. Unless the IFAB comes up with entirely new ideas soon.