Top 10 infamous curses in football

Superstition is something I don’t align myself with. Heck, if anything, I could hardly be labelled as someone who believes in paranormal activities but then again, being in a South Asian country means that I always find myself surrounded by whispers of such matters.

As it turns out, however, these phenomena aren’t confined to only the third-world countries. In fact, even the beautiful game of football is riddled with supernatural hoodoos or curses.

And here are ten of the infamous ‘curses’ in football…

#10 Cursed by blood

Taking a penalty is a normal thing, isn’t it? The shooter places the ball on the spot and kicks it towards the goal. When Carlos Hermosillo took a penalty, however, it changed everything for the worse.

It was 1997 and Club Leon’s goalkeeper Angel Comizzo kicked Carlos Hermosillo in the face. As a result, a penalty was awarded while the latter started bleeding profusely.

As Hermosillo was about to take the penalty, the referee asked him to clean the blood off his face, but he didn’t pay heed and went on to score a late winner from the penalty.

This apparently put both the teams under a spell of a curse of the blood. Leon were then relegated in 2002 but came back to the first division and won the Apertura in 2013 and Clausura in 2014 – breaking their part of the curse.

Cruz Azul, meanwhile, are yet to win the championship since 1997.