For a game steeped in superstition, it will come as little surprise to hear that some football clubs have felt a paranormal presence in their midst.
Because while John Terry famously sat in the same seat on the team bus during his time at Chelsea, and Laurent Blanc bizarrely kissed the bald head of French keeper Fabien Barthez before every game of their 1998 World Cup triumph, there have been eerie tales of far darker arts at play.
In South America, rumours of seven dead cats buried under Racing Club’s El Cilindro stadium shortly after their Intercontinental Cup win over Celtic in 1967 were blamed for a barren spell of trophies.
It wasn’t until 2001 that the cats, allegedly placed by fans of their great rivals Independiente while Racing celebrated the European triumph, were all removed. That very same year, the club won just their second trophy since beating Jock Stein’s men, and have since been consistently successful.
On European soil there are yet more curious instances, including the so-called curse of Béla Guttmann, the former Benfica manager who is said to be responsible for the club’s continental misery since the 1960s.
Guttmann, who won back-to-back European Cups, is said to have declared: ‘Not in a hundred years from now will Benfica ever be European champions again.’ The Portuguese side have appeared in eight finals and have astonishingly lost them all since their former boss’s chilling statement.
While some of the most famous cases of bad luck can be put down to coincidence, some football stadiums – particularly in Britain – have been standing for more than 100 years, with many generations and souls having passed through them every.
So, as Halloween weekend arrives, Daily Mail Sport looks back at some of football’s spookiest, eerie and frankly bizarre stories rumoured to have originated on our shores.
Cats were buried beneath Racing Club’s stadium after their European triumph over Celtic
Laurent Blanc kissed the head of Fabien Barthez before every game of the 1998 World Cup
Ian Holloway’s claims Swindon’s training ground was haunted – but did his wife’s ‘cleanse’ work?
Ian Holloway astonishingly declared last November that his Swindon Town team’s poor run of form could be because the training ground is ‘haunted’ – and that he would be asking his wife to ‘cleanse the area’ with sage.
The Robins’ manager feared ‘strange things’ were taking place at Beversbrook Sports and Community facility, where the League Two club train.
Captain Ollie Clarke ruptured a tendon in his ankle the week before his comments and Holloway, who was appointed the month prior, suggested the supernatural could have been targeting his beleaguered side.
‘I’m absolutely devastated so I’m going to try and cleanse the training ground area because people are telling me it’s haunted,’ he told BBC Radio WIltshire.
‘There’s a graveyard somewhere near. Honestly, I’m not joking.
Ian Hollowa asked his wife to ‘cleanse’ Swindon’s ‘haunted’ training ground last November
Kim (left) was brought in to flush out the ghouls at Beversbrook using sage last year
The ‘haunted’ site: Swindon train at Beversbrook Sports and Community Facility in Calne
‘I think our training ground is very close to an ancient burial site so I’m going to get my wife to come up and say sorry to all these people and hopefully we’ll have a bit more luck.’
Though there have been no further updates on whether Holloway’s wife was able to flush out the ghouls, it’s fair to say things have well and truly turned around for his side.
The 62-year-old was offered a new contract just five months after his wife’s visit to Swindon’s Beversbrook base, and now has them sitting joint-top of League Two.
Perhaps the sage worked wonders after all.
Barry Fry ‘p****d in all four corners’ to cure Birmingham’s supposed Traveller curse – and still got sacked
While Holloway was being quizzed about his side’s ‘haunted’ training ground, he made mention of one of British football’s most infamous stories – Barry Fry’s attempt to cure a curse by urination.
Appointed in 1993 as Birmingham City’s boss, the larger-than-life Fry arrived with an initially positive impact which restored confidence and put a few points on the board for the West Midlands side.
But things quickly started to go awry, with injuries, bad luck and a poor run of form culminating in a 15-game winless streak which was linked back to an rumoured curse placed in 1906.
The cause of the curse was simple – a group of angry Romani Travellers were said to have been furious at City’s decision to move from Muntz Street into St Andrew’s, where they had set up a camp, and in retaliation the group are believed to have cursed them.
Thus, Fry sought to fix it by any means necessary. In this instance a rather unconventional way.
Barry Fry attempted to cure an alleged curse placed on his Birmingham side in 1993
A group of Travellers were said to have cursed the grounds of St Andrew’s stadium
‘We went three months without winning … We were desperate, so I p****d in all four corners, holding it in while I waddled round the pitch,’ Fry told FourFourTwo previously.
‘Did it work? Well, we started to win and I thought it had, then they f*****g sacked me, so probably not.’
Holloway said while he was going to ask his wife for assistance for Swindon’s supposedly haunted training ground, that he wouldn’t do what Fry did.
The Swindon boss said: ‘I don’t want to do what he did, I think he had to urinate on the corners of his pitch but I’m going to get my wife to come up with her sage.’
Don Revie: Tactical genius, Leeds icon, and… superstition supremo?
Don Revie and Barry Fry went on to have very different careers indeed. Yet they are both believed to have been central figures in the peculiar urination on a football pitch in order to dispel a supposed Traveller curse.
Revie managed Leeds for 13 years before taking the helm of the English National Team and three – at that time – unusual moves to the Middle East with the UAE national side, Al-Nasr and Al-Ahly.
An incredibly successful boss, Revie brought two First Division titles to Elland Road, as well as an FA Cup, a League Cup, Charity Shield. He has been immortalised outside the stadium in statue.
But he was also reportedly a superstition supremo.
Don Revie was an incredibly successful manager – and he worked with major superstitions
Revie has been immortalised outside Elland Road with a statue of his towering figure
Revie wore a lucky blue suit to big games, is believed to have always made a habit of touching the nearest lamppost to his hotel, and, famously, changed Leeds’ badge because he thought birds were bad luck.
Between periods of success at Leeds, Revie leaned into his superstitions after being convinced that Elland Road was cursed by an old Traveller camp on the site of the ground.
Thus, akin to Fry at Birmingham, Revie sought to address those concerns – but brought in some outsider help in the form of a female fortune teller from Blackpool.
She reportedly arrived at the stadium in Yorkshire, scratched the turf of the pitch and threw some seeds on it. Before leaving, the fortune teller is believed to have urinated on each of the stadium’s corner flags before heading westward.
From Steve Jobs to Osama bin Laden: The famous faces who have died shortly after Aaron Ramsey goals
Anyone with a keen interest in the niche subplots of football will know all about this one: the so-called Aaron Ramsey curse.
It centres on the idea that whenever the Welshman scores a goal, a celebrity or high-profile figure is doomed to die soon after.
Over his career, the midfielder – who has also played for Nottingham Forest, Juventus and Rangers – has scored 80 club goals, as well as 21 for Wales, and in the days following 26 of these goals, at least one notable celebrity died.
Though he was not playing at the time, superstitious football fans were convinced that Pope Francis became a victim of the Welshman’s supposed curse in May, with the pontiff dying just two days after Ramsey was briefly appointed Cardiff manager.
Charlie Kirk this year also died nine days after Ramsey opened his account for Mexican side Pumas in September this year.
The surreal superstition dates back to when Ramsey scored his first goal for Arsenal against Fenerbache on October 21, 2008. The following day, Henry V actor David Lloyd Meredith died.
In August 2009 Ramsey scored against Portsmouth and three days later Ted Kennedy was dead.
But it wasn’t until May 2011 when the curse was first made public. Shortly after Ramsey had scored at the Emirates against Manchester United, number one on the United States terror watch list Osama Bin Laden was dead.
Many famous faces have died shortly after Welsh midfielder Aaron Ramsey scores a goal
The surreal superstition dates back to when Ramsey scored his first goal for Arsenal
After scoring against Tottenham at home on October 2, 2011, the death of Steve Jobs was reported three days later.
When Arsene Wenger brought Ramsey on against Marseille on 77 minutes, on October 19, 2011, it did not appear that he would be on the field long enough to score. Yet, the following day, Arsenal had left the South of France with three points, and Muammar Gaddafi had met his end.
After he scored against Sunderland on February 11, 2012, it appeared that another celebrity would be passing on, and Whitney Houston was the unfortunate A-lister.
On November 30, 2013, Ramsey was playing in his native Cardiff when he scored twice against his former club. That same day, Fast and Furious star Paul Walker crashed his car and died.
At the start of the 2014-15 season Ramsey scored against Manchester City in the Community Shield and the next day Robin Williams was dead.
At the start of 2016, Ramsey scored goals for Arsenal in successive games. After his goal against Sunderland on January 9, David Bowie died. He then scored against Liverpool at Anfield and the following day Alan Rickman had passed on.
Ramsey has dubbed the ‘curse’ ridiculous and said the deaths are just pure coincidence.
Addressing the theory in 2015 in an interview with Sport Magazine, the Welshman said: ‘The most ridiculous rumour I’ve heard is that people die after I score. There have been loads of occasions where I’ve scored and somebody has died.’
