I SCORED A GOAL IN A WORLD CUP STADIUM DURING THE WORLD CUP

No joke, I have. And since it is South Korea playing at the moment I will recount the story.

When you are in another country you do things you just wouldn’t consider at home.

I was in Korea during the world cup last summer (this article was written in 2007). Due to the time difference between Korea and Germany some of the games were at 4am Korea time.

It was Korea’s last match and they needed to beat Switzerland to qualify for the next round. A few of the other foreigners and myself decided to go and watch it with the Koreans on the big screens in the local stadium (which is the one where Korea beat Italy in the 2002 world cup).

The problem with watching a game at 4am is that there is quite a lot of drinking time before the match.

We had been out to a few bars and then made our way to the Daejeon World Cup Stadium. It was amazing that at 4am it was completely full and we nearly didn’t get in.

Anyway, we smuggled some more booze in too. Before the game two of the expats ran on to the pitch with a Korea flag, which went down very well with the locals.

The game didn’t go too well for them and they ended up losing 2-0 and exited the tournament, so they were no longer exactly in the mood for fun.

It was at this point that I dropped down the ten foot wall (you can see it in the picture) to the pitch and ran on with another guy. He started to crawl under the huge Korea flag in the centre of the pitch so they would have to go under it in order to fish him out.

I made straight for the goals. I have never scored a goal in a huge stadium before so that was my mission. I didn’t have a ball though, so I scored (left footed volley, top right corner) with the only available thing, which was my cigarette packet and then proceeded to do a Klinsmann dive celebration.

Ok, job done. The next thing is to get back into the crowd. I tried unsuccessfully to climb up the wall. A Korean dropped the end of a scarf down for me to grab onto so I could pull myself up but the scarf snapped.

At this point the security came over. I was now shitting myself because if you invade the pitch in Scotland you are most likely off to the cells for an evening or two.

I had one burly security guard on each arm and was convinced I was going to the cells/going to be sacked/ deported (which would have been extreme). The two security guards frog marched me…..wait for it….wait for it….. back to my seat!

Then they just left me to get on with it.

Unfortunately my camera had been stolen a week or so before so I don’t have any pictures of the night in question. The pictures here are from the same stadium but at a different occasion.