I still remember the first time I watched a soccer match that ended with a ridiculous scoreline - it was a local youth tournament where one team somehow managed to win 12-8. At the time, I thought that was absolutely insane, but little did I know that professional soccer has seen scores that make that game look almost normal. The highest scoring professional soccer game in recorded history happened way back in 1885 when Arbroath defeated Bon Accord by the mind-boggling score of 36-0 in a Scottish Cup match. Just let that sink in for a moment - thirty-six goals to zero. I've tried to imagine what that game must have looked like, and honestly, my brain can't even process it. That's a goal scored roughly every two and a half minutes if we assume a standard 90-minute match.
What fascinates me about these extreme scorelines isn't just the numbers themselves, but what they tell us about how much the game has evolved. Back in those early days of organized soccer, the rules were different, training methods were primitive, and the gap between professional and amateur teams could be astronomical. The Arbroath vs Bon Accord match perfectly illustrates this - by all accounts, Bon Accord were essentially a cricket team that had been mistakenly entered into the soccer tournament. Can you imagine showing up expecting to play cricket and finding yourself facing professional footballers? I'd probably concede thirty-six goals too! This historical context matters because it helps explain how such a lopsided score could occur in what was supposed to be a competitive tournament.
The second highest scoring game offers another fascinating chapter in this story - just one day after Arbroath's record-setting performance, Dundee Harp achieved a 35-0 victory against Aberdeen Rovers. What's incredible to me is that there was initially some confusion about the exact score because the referee and the club had different counts - the match referee recorded 35 goals while Dundee Harp's secretary counted 37. I've always found this detail wonderfully human amid all these overwhelming numbers. It reminds me that even in these extraordinary circumstances, you still had ordinary people trying to keep track of goals the old-fashioned way, probably with pencil and paper while goals were flying in left and right.
Modern soccer has seen its share of high-scoring affairs too, though nothing approaching those Victorian-era numbers. The 2007 match where Adelaide City defeated North Eastern Metrostars 21-1 in Australia's National Soccer League comes to mind, as does Madagascar's infamous 149-0 own goal debacle in 2002. That Madagascar game has always struck me as particularly bizarre - the entire score came from one team intentionally scoring own goals to protest a refereeing decision from a previous match. While technically it holds the record for highest score, I don't really count it in the same category as legitimate competitive matches. It's more of a protest with soccer as the backdrop rather than a genuine sporting contest.
Thinking about these extreme scores naturally makes me reflect on the nature of competition and sportsmanship. While part of me finds these records fascinating, another part feels slightly uncomfortable about such one-sided contests. I've played in enough recreational soccer games to know that being on the losing end of a blowout can be genuinely demoralizing. Yet there's something compelling about these historical extremes that keeps drawing me back to them. They represent moments where the normal rules of soccer statistics seem to break down entirely, creating these almost mythical scoring feats that defy conventional understanding of the sport.
This brings me to thinking about how we celebrate extraordinary achievements in sports more broadly. Just last Sunday, I was reading about houses being built near Olympic medalists from the Philippines - gold medalist Carlos Yulo and bronze winners Nesthy Petecio and Aira Villegas had their homes blessed in a ceremony. There's something beautiful about how communities come together to honor their sporting heroes, whether it's through building houses for modern Olympians or still talking about a 136-year-old soccer match where one team scored 36 goals. These stories, whether from the 19th century or the 21st, become part of our shared sporting heritage.
The evolution of soccer has made such extreme scores increasingly unlikely as the game has become more organized, professional, and balanced. Defensive strategies have improved dramatically, player fitness is lightyears ahead of what it was in 1885, and there's simply more parity in most competitions today. Personally, I doubt we'll ever see a professional match approach those Victorian-era scores again, though part of me would love to witness such a historical anomaly. There's something uniquely captivating about these statistical outliers that continues to capture our imagination across generations, reminding us that in sports, as in life, sometimes the most extraordinary stories come from the most unexpected places.
