The Russian couple who broke up because of their discussion about Messi and CR7 and other stories about the World Cups

A man jumped into a river full of crocodiles to get tickets for the World Cup in South Africa, a player from Uruguay returned to the field immediately after suffering a heart attack in 1954 and a Russian couple broke up after arguing over who was the better player, if Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo.

These are some of the incredible stories about the World Cups collected in a new book by Argentine writer Luciano Wernicke, published in several languages ​​days before the start of the World Cup in Qatar on Sunday.

Wernicke has been compiling striking stories in sports, but also in politics and culture from the first Soccer World Cup in Uruguay 1930 to Russia 2018.

From a coach who fell asleep in the middle of a game in the 1930 World Cup in Uruguay due to formaldehyde accidentally spilled on a playing field to the most hilarious cabals, the book “Unusual stories from the Soccer World Cups” tells the most human side of the most popular sport in the world.

“It is a book that covers the most important sporting event of humanity from different aspects. One is sporting, but given its global significance it also includes very significant events at a political, social, economic level,” Wernicke, 52, told Reuters.

“And then there are other pearls that are interesting to see, which may be smaller stories but that somehow describe what passion for soccer is,” he added.

Among many others, the book tells the unusual story of an Albanian man who in 1994, when the World Cup was being played in the United States, bet his wife in a sports betting house that Argentina would beat Bulgaria and lost, losing his wife. , who left him horrified.

Another incredible story tells that in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa a local radio station offered two tickets to the final to whoever did the most madness and a man threw himself into a river full of crocodiles, while his wife filmed him and his brother guarded him with a rifle so he wouldn’t end up swallowed.

This is the third edition of the book, which has been translated into 20 languages ​​and is incorporating each World Cup in a new chapter, so the author is already collecting data on Qatar, a World Cup that promises to have several curious aspects.

“There are many things, in the first place there are all these boycott claims and the issue of human rights. Outside of sports, there will undoubtedly be a lot. The social will weigh heavily,” said the author, who has written more than 20 books about sports, including “Dark Goals,” about how politicians and dictators used soccer for personal gain.