The 7 Greatest Underdog Stories In Football History

In the 2013 FA Cup Final, little old Wigan Athletic, mired in the Premier League relegation zone at the time, having won just nine league games all season, came up against the might of Manchester City. The richest team in world football, the Citizens had spent £550m in just four seasons since their Emirati takeover in 2008, creating a star-studded starting XI which featured the likes of Yaya Toure, David Silva, Sergio Agüero and Carlos Tevez. They were the reigning champions of England, had already done the double over Wigan in the league, and over half of their starting XI cost more than Wigan's entire squad. Rarely had the outcome of an FA Cup Final appeared to have been more of a foregone conclusion, but having frustrated their state-owned opponents for 91 miraculous minutes, substitute Ben Watson came off the bench to seal his spot in football folklore with a dramatic header and injury time. Three days later, Wigan lost 4-1 against Arsenal and their Premier League relegation was confirmed, making them the first club ever to win the FA Cup and get relegated in the same season. Today, they compete in League One, the third tier of English football, haven't been blighted by scandal and crises for the past decade, meanwhile Manchester City have become the dominant force in English, and perhaps now European football. But for 90 minutes, on the biggest stage of them all, Wigan went toe-to-toe with a team that ought to have thrashed them, and pulled off one of the greatest upsets that the sport has ever seen. It is one of the reasons why football is the most popular sport in the world. The low scoring nature of it, combined with the unpredictability of what can happen in just 90 minutes, opens it up to incredible shocks, upsets and drama, especially in cup competitions. Iceland, a nation of fewer than 400,000 people, knocked England out of Euro 2016 before becoming the smallest country ever to qualify for the World Cup, meanwhile Denmark won the Euros in 1992, despite failing to even qualify for the tournament. It was only after the Yugoslav Wars broke out and Yugoslavia were disqualified, that Denmark were offered their place as the runners-up behind Yugoslavia from their qualifying group. They went on to beat France, the Netherlands and finally Germany in the final, to record a historic upset, which was made all the more remarkable given that their star player, Michael Laudrup, had refused to participate. At the 1950 World Cup, Brazil's victory on home soil was considered a formality, especially after they beat Sweden 7-1 and Spain 6-1. In their final game against Uruguay, who had drawn 2-2 with Spain, and only won 3-2 against Sweden, Brazil only needed a draw to win the World Cup. Brazilian newspapers were so confident that they had already printed the morning's headlines celebrating Brazil's World Cup win, before the game had been played. Despite going 1-0 up against Uruguay though, Brazil went on to lose 2-1, in an upset so shocking it sent Brazil into a state of mourning. It's because of that that Brazil play in yellow and green, as they ditched their previous white and blue kit, believing it to have been cursed. You know that it's a pretty big upset when the losing team undergoes an identity change after the match. Well, today, hard as this may be to believe, I am here to tell you that there have been seven even more remarkable upsets and triumphs by Dark Horses than all of those that I just mentioned. Yes, here are, with several honourable mentions, what I would consider to be the seven greatest underdog stories in the history of football. Seventh, Calais' 2000 Coupe de France. For an English audience, the word Calais is only likely to mean one thing. It's that bit of France that is quite close to us. In France however, this small port city evokes memories of one of the greatest cup runs of all time. The Coupe de France is possibly the best domestic cup competition in world football. Due to France's lingering colonial outposts, it is a competition which spans five of the world's seven continents, leading to away days, which can span over half of the diameter of the globe. It also has an almost unique ability to throw up the most sensational of cup sets. In the FA Cup, if an amateur team makes it through to the third round, which is the stage at which Premier League and Championship teams enter the competition, that is a historic achievement. In the 1999-2000 Coupe de France, an amateur team made it all the way through to the final. Calais RUFC, which stands for Racing Union Football Club, rather than Rugby Union Football Club, just in case there was any confusion, gave up their professional status all the way back in 1938, and by 2000, they were competing in the wholly amateur Championnat National 2, which is the fourth tier of French football. That means that Calais' entire team had full-time jobs outside of football. Defenders Jocelyn Merlin and winger Michael Gerrard were shopkeepers, who primarily sold alcohol to tourists on a day trip from England, midfielder Stéphane Canu was a gardener, and Calais' star man Emmanuel Vasseur worked as an electrician on trains in the Channel Tunnel. Calais manager Ladislaz Lozano, a Spaniard who fled to France under General Franco, was a council foreman responsible for tending to the region's sporting facilities. This was a team that had no right to even dream of beating a professional opponent. Instead, they beat five. Dunkirk, Lille, Cannes, Strasbourg, and even the might of Bordeaux, who were at that time the champions of the French game, were humbled by this ragtag bunch of amateurs en route to the most unlikely of finals against Nantes, in front of 78,717 fans at the Stade de France. Had Calais won that game as well, they might well have topped this seven. Sadly, they lost 2-1 despite taking an early lead, following a brace by Futureman City and Newcastle United star Antoine Zabrski. Doubly sadly, Calais RUFC, with a badge which was so bad that it is actually brilliant, also no longer exist. Situated in one of the most deprived cities in France, Calais RUFC's financial woes echoed their surroundings, and in 2017 the club was liquidated. In 2023, RACE and Club Calais were formed through a merger of two local clubs, starting out in the 6th tier of the French game. So Lille and Bordeaux, watch out. 6th, Greece at Euro 2004. As predictable of an inclusion as it is justified, Greece's Euro 2004 crown is one of the single most remarkable achievements in the entire history of international football. Euro 2004 was only the second Euros that Greece had ever qualified for, and the first since 1980, and perhaps the signs ought to have been there as they recorded a shocked 1-0 win away against Spain in qualifying. Nonetheless, a month before the tournament, Greece had lost 1-0 against Poland and 4-0 against the Netherlands, and few gave them a hope in hell of getting out of a group containing both Portugal and Spain. Greece beat the host 2-1 in the opening game of the tournament though, and despite drawing with Spain and losing against Russia, that was enough to earn them progression as Group A runners-up. In the quarterfinals, Greece faced the reigning European champions France, whose star studded starting XI included the likes of Thierry Henry, David Trezeguet, and Zinedine Zidane. Unmoved, Greece beat them 1-0. Then came the Czech Republic, who had won all three of their group games against Germany, Latvia, and the Netherlands, followed by an emphatic 3-0 win against Denmark in the quarterfinals. This was a generational Czech Republic team, featuring Petr Cech, Tomas Ruzicki, Jan Koller, Milan Baros, and the reigning Ballon d'Or winner, Pavel Nedved. Once again, Greece won 1-0. In the final of Euro 2004, just as in the opening game, Greece faced the host Portugal. It didn't matter that Greece had already beaten them, as far as most onlookers were concerned, as since then, a Portugal team starring the likes of Luis Figo, Rui Costa, Deco, and Cristiano Ronaldo had hit form, beating the likes of Spain, England, and the Netherlands. On home soil, it seemed to be written in the stars that they would win their first ever major tournament. Again, though, someone forgot to email Greece the script. In a typically dogged, relentless, and embattled performance, they didn't give away an inch. It was via the head of Werder Bremen forward, Angelos Karasteas, with his third goal of the tournament, that Greece recorded the single greatest Euros upset of all time. This was a team without a single certified superstar. The closest anyone came was the indomitable Georgios Karagounis, though even he had only managed to make 21 league appearances in two seasons at Inter Milan. Greece's manager, Otto Rehagel, is perhaps the greatest author of underdog stories that football has ever known. Responsible for both Werder Bremen and, most notably, FC Kaiserslautern's improbable Bundesliga titles, the latter coming just the season after Kaiserslautern had one promotion, even for Rehagel, Euro 2004 was his crowning moment. Incidentally, it appeared as though 2004 was a special year for underdogs. Valencia won La Liga, Bremen won the Bundesliga, Porto won the Champions League, and Monaco made it to the final, and most notably of all, once Caldas shocked South American football by first making it all the way to the final and then overcoming Boca Juniors to lift the Copa Libertadores. 5th, Iraq's 2007 Asian Cup. I have done my best to rank this 7 in terms of the degree of shock and the sheer unlikeliness of some of football's greatest ever underdog stories, but in terms of romance, tragedy, and a compelling narrative, none can compete with Iraq's triumph at the 2007 Asian Cup. It would be fair to say that both before, and indeed since 2007, life in Iraq has routinely been rendered extremely difficult. The Baathist Party seized power in 1968 in a bloodless coup, with Saddam Hussein becoming president in 1979. Saddam ran a sadistic regime of fear, as well as starting the Iran-Iraq War, which claimed the lives of between 1-2 million people, before ending in a stalemate, and the Gulf War, which led to 5 million people being displaced. In 2003, the United States, United Kingdom, and their allies, including Australia and Poland invaded Iraq, falsely accusing Saddam of having weapons of mass destruction. Saddam was overthrown and later executed, but the resulting occupation, power vacuum, and conflicts between insurgent groups and counter-insurgents created even more misery for Iraqis, as well as leading to the rise of groups like ISIS. It was in this context, in 2007, that Iraq's national football team headed to the AFC Asian Cup, jointly hosted by Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Given the circumstances, that Iraq had even managed to cobble a team together and get them to the tournament was an achievement in of itself, but their ambitions didn't stop there. Under Saddam, Iraq's football and Olympic teams had come under the direct control of Adai Hussein. Saddam's even more sadistic son, whose fetish for violence was so extreme that even Saddam concluded that he was unsuitable to succeed in. Adai tortured Iraq's footballers, literally, in extremely brutal fashion, as well as creating his own domestic football team and ensuring that they conquered Iraqi football unopposed. I have covered all of this in a documentary, should any of you be interested. Just search HITC7's Iraq, or something like that, and it will be the top result. Heading into the 2007 Asian Cup, Iraq were ranked 84th in the FIFA World Rankings, below continental rivals like Uzbekistan, China, and Oman. Iraq's players trained through intermittent airstrikes and constant fears for the safety of themselves and their loved ones. Winger, Hawar Mullah Mohammed, even carried a machine gun to training, so fearful was he of his safety, meanwhile goalkeeper Noor Sabri's brother-in-law was killed just days before the tournament began. In the group stage, Iraq beat Australia's Golden Generation, featuring the likes of Harry Kuehl, Tim Cahill, and Mark Viduka 3-1. That alone would have been remarkable enough, but Iraq proceeded to beat Vietnam, South Korea, and finally Saudi Arabia in the final to lift their first, and still their only, AFC Asian Cup. Throughout half a century of misery imposed upon the Iraqi people, football has provided a rare unifying force and source of optimism, even if that sanctity was abused by a die. And at the 2007 Asian Cup, they provided inspiration not only to Iraqis but to the world, in terms of the triumph of human spirit in the face of extraordinary adversity, both on and off the pitch. Fourth, Lille's 2021 League Untitled. If I had to hazard a guess, I would imagine that this is the inclusion that will probably feel the least satisfying to a lot of you watching this, and the one that some of you would be most inclined to swap out for some of the honourable mentions. With that in mind, I'll try to explain why Lille's 2021 League Untitled, I believe, is the fourth greatest underdog story in football history, and wouldn't look out of place in third, second, or first. For a start, Ligue 1 ought to be a one-team league. In the 2020-21 season, PSG's wage bill was four times larger than the wage bill of any other team in Ligue 1, at over half a billion euros. The next largest wage bill in the division wasn't Lille's, it was Marseille's. Lille's wage bill, of 89 million euros, was just over a sixth, or 17.69%, to be specific, of the size of PSG's. Lille's entire squad earned less than Neymar and Kylian Mbappe. That is a financial mismatch far greater than the gap between Manchester City and Bournemouth, for example, and it would be roughly equivalent, in financial terms, to Sheffield United beating Manchester City to this season's Premier League title. It doesn't stop there, though, because the season that Lille won the Ligue 1 title, they sold over 100 million euros worth of players, including their star striker Victor Ossimén and centre-back Gabriel Magalhães, and they only reinvested 40 million euros on new arrivals. The previous season, they had also lost Nicolás Pepe, Rafael Leão, and Thiago Mendes, again raking in more than 70 million euros in profit. In the circumstances, Lille ought to have been nowhere near the title, but over a 38-game campaign, they lost just three games, whilst PSG lost eight. They drew a lot more games than the Parisians, it should be said, but their remarkable defensive record, conceding just 23 goals in 38 games, was enough to win them a league title that should never have been possible. Third, Hellas Verona's 1985 Serie A title. Maybe the most overlooked underdog story in European football history, whenever I make one of these videos, which isn't very often these days, after planning out my own seven, I just take a look at how other people would rank the same topic, so, in this context, the game's greatest shocks, upsets, or dark horses. Inevitably, in this context again, the likes of Greece's Euro 2004 conquest, and Iceland beating England are always in there, but Hellas Verona winning the 1984-85 Serie A title, which, I would argue, is a more remarkable achievement, barely, if ever gets a mention. We should start by noting that, in the mid-1980s, Serie A was the undisputed best league in Europe, and almost certainly the best in the world. Virtually every team was chock-a-block with superstars. Inter Milan had Giuseppe Begomi, Liam Brady, and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, AC Milan had Franco Beresi, Paolo Maldini, and Pietro Paoloverdi, Juventus had Zbigniew Boniec, Michel Platini, and Paolo Rossi, and of course, Napoli had Diego Armando Maradona. So which one of them went on to win the scheretto? Well, as you've probably established by now, the answer is none of them. In fact, none of those four even managed to finish second. It was Hellas Verona, who had finished 8th the previous season, closer to the relegation zone than the top of the table, who shot the Italian game and won their first and still their only Serie A title. At the time, Italian football was known for its defensive tactics and lack of goals, defined by the catenaccio system, and Verona, who only won promotion to Serie A under Osvaldo Bagnoli in 1982, became the masters of that system in the 1984-85 season. Rock solid and absolutely dogged in their defensive duties, Verona conceded just 19 goals all season and only lost two games. It was a freak season and one of the greatest underdog stories of all time, as was reinforced by Verona, dropping all the way down to 10th the following season, 17 points off the title, and just 5 points above the relegation zone. Second, West Germany at the 1954 World Cup. The greatest underdog story in the history of international football is West Germany's 1954 World Cup win. I know what some of you will be thinking. Germany, the relentless winning machine, Europe's most successful national team, who have won four World Cups, then winning the World Cup, is the greatest underdog story in the history of international football. Yes. Yes, I'm afraid it is. Less than a decade after the end of World War II, in which Germany was almost totally destroyed, with almost 1 in 10 Germans being killed and over a third of all buildings in major cities razed to the ground, the country was literally split in three. West Germany, East Germany, and Saarland. German football was, arguably, in an even worse state than the nation as a whole. Under the Nazis, despite the Anschluss and taking all of Austria's then very talented players, Germany was still absolutely rubbish. They were so bad, in fact, that Joseph Goebbels eventually banned international football due to the damage that it was doing to German morale and propaganda. Post-World War II, Germany and Japan were effectively banned from competing in the 1950 World Cup, and by the time the 1954 World Cup came around, football had only been played professionally in Germany for five years. The nation's first nationwide professional football league, meanwhile, the Bundesliga, wouldn't be founded for another nine years. In the group stage, Germany beat Turkey 4-1 in their opening game, before losing 8-3 against Hungary. At the time, Hungary were the best national team in the world. In fact, they were probably the best national team that has ever existed, or at least the most dominant, scoring the highest ELO ranking in the history of international football. Hungary had only lost one game in the last four years, during which time they had twice beaten Italy 3-0, Czechoslovakia 5-1, and England 6-3 and 7-1. At the World Cup, as well as battering West Germany 8-3 in the group stage, Hungary beat South Korea 9-0, and both Brazil and Uruguay 4-2 en route to the final. West Germany, meanwhile, recovered from their Hungarian hammering to earn a meeting with the magical Magyar in the final. Hungary's epoch-defining team, combined with their earlier thrashing of West Germany, made them the odds-on favorites, and after just eight minutes, they had already raced into a 2-0 lead. A repeat of the 8-3 group stage thrashing looked to be firmly on the cards, but in the pouring Swiss rain, in a game that became known as the Miracle of Bern, West Germany fought back, going on to win the match 3-2. In both the immediate and the since long-term aftermath, the inquest as to how Germany were able to win has been intense. Coach Sepp Herberg arrested players for Germany's group stage tie with Hungary in order to lure their potential final opponents into a false sense of security is one suggestion, though not wholly satisfying given the degree of Hungary's dominance at the time. Ferenc Puskás, Hungary's star man, though he still managed to score in the final, was playing through an injury that likely would have ruled him out, were it any other game than a World Cup final. Then there was the rain, which stunted Hungary's ability to play their awe-inspiring passing game, but helped the Germans, who had innovative new screw-in studs designed by Adidas. The refereeing decisions surrounding Germany's second and Hungary's disallowed third goals have also long been the subject of debate, in addition to more sinister accusations of doping on the part of the German players. Incidentally, doping wasn't actually banned at the time, FIFA only implemented rules prohibiting it in 1966. Whatever the explanation, the 1954 World Cup and, primarily, the World Cup final, is the greatest underdog story in international football history and, if anything, the mythology which attempts to explain it only adds to its sense of wonder and mystique. Zero. Honourable Mentions. I mentioned a few of them in the introduction and have scattered a couple more throughout, but quite frankly, it is in the nature of football to have upsets and underdog stories, and I couldn't possibly name all of those honourable mentions who deserve recognition, even if this segment alone were half an hour long. Nonetheless, some of those which came particularly close to featuring but didn't, and which I haven't already mentioned, include the likes of Wimbledon's 1988 FA Cup win, Nottingham Forest's European Cup double, an all-amateur USA team beating England at the 1950 World Cup, Kaiserslautern's 1998 Bundesliga title, Red Star Belgrade and Staub-Bucharest winning the Champions League, Werder Bremen's 2004 double, Algeria's 1982 World Cup win against the West Germans, Bursaspor lifting the 2010 Turkish Super League title, Amateur Covelli following in the footsteps of Calais in making it through to the final of the 2012 Coupe de France, Zambia's 2012 AFCON triumph, Montpellier's league untitled in the same year, and Real Madrid's reserve team, Real Madrid Castilla, making it all the way through to the final of the Copa del Rey, where they met their parent club Real Madrid. All very honourable mentions, I'm sure you'd agree, but now it is time for what I would imagine, at this stage, is a fairly predictable top spot. First, Leicester City's 2016 Premier League title. There is a reason why, though upsets, giant killings and underdog stories are much more common in cup competitions, three league triumphs featuring this seven, and that is because it is so much more difficult for an underdog to succeed across an entire league campaign, rather than over a single 90 minutes, or six or seven games, in a knockout format. Hellas Forona and Lille's title wins ought not to have been possible for that reason, but Leicester City's 5,000-1 Premier League title takes the biscuit. To put those odds into some context, at the start of that season, you could get odds of 2,000-1 on it turning out that Elvis Presley was in fact still alive and well. The king of rock and roll hasn't yet returned, it would be one hell of a climax to this video if I just announced that wouldn't it, but Leicester City, against all the odds, were crowned as the 2015-16 champions of England. The previous season had been Leicester's first back in the top flight, since 2004, and they only avoided relegation by the skin of their teeth. Anchored not just to the relegation zone, but actually to the foot of the Premier League table, even at the start of April, at which point Leicester had won just four games out of a possible 29 all season, they then went on a miraculous run, winning seven out of their last nine games, to claw their way to safety. Over the summer, manager Nigel Pearson was sacked, in a decision which was reported to have been linked to his son James appearing in an allegedly racist sex tape during Leicester's pre-season tour of Thailand. Pearson was replaced by Claudio Ranieri, who had been sacked after just four months, four games, one draw and three defeats, in charge of Greece's national team in his most recent job. Leicester were installed therefore, as one to three favourites to go down, and ludicrous 5,000-1 odds, to win the Premier League. As if things weren't already hard enough for the Foxes, Leicester lost their player of the season from the previous season, Esteban Cambiasso over the summer, and replaced him with a little-known Frenchman called N'Golo Kante. It turned out that Kante was really rather good though, and Leicester made a fairly miraculous start to the campaign. Leicester lost just one of their opening seven matches, and even following a 5-2 defeat at home to Arsenal, they bounced back to go on another 10-game unbeaten run. Jamie Vardy, who scored five Premier League goals the previous season, exceeded that tally after seven games, and went on to score 24 Premier League goals in total. Robert Huth, signed for £3m from Stoke City, was a colossus alongside Wes Morgan, meanwhile Riyad Mahrez bewildered full-backs the length and breadth of Britain. Leicester went on to win the Premier League title, fairly comfortably, they finished 10 points above Arsenal, having led the table uninterrupted from the middle of January onwards. In the modern game, and particularly in heavily financialised major leagues like the Premier League, outcomes are determined so strictly by spending now, that you can guess the top six, or seven now, by just naming the seven richest clubs, and you are likely to get at least six out of seven right each season. In that context, a team that was nearly relegated the previous season, was playing in the Championship the season before that, and who lost their manager and best player the previous season in pre-season, not just breaking into the top six, which would have been remarkable in its own right, but actually emphatically winning the league, that is the single greatest underdog story in the history of football, and it is extraordinarily unlikely that it will ever be repeated, at least so long as football maintains its current structures and business model. That is it for today's video, and if you enjoyed it, then you have the wonders of artificial intelligence to thank. They didn't write, record, or edit it, no, that took me two days, with very little sleep and a horrendous cold, apologies if I still sound a bit off, but I made it as an experiment after asking AI what would make for an interesting HITC7s video, and it replied, the greatest underdog stories in football history. So, if you enjoyed it, we are all doomed and AI is about to become our overlords, and if you didn't then, fear not, I will soon revert to picking my own video ideas without consulting any robots. Either way, hit the like button to celebrate football's ability to create underdog stories that defy belief, let me know your thoughts down below in the comments, and of course, goes without saying, make sure that you are subscribed and have notifications turned on for both this channel, HITC7s, and also my second channel, Alfie Potts Arma, both of which should be on or about to appear on your screens now, along with a couple of videos that you might enjoy watching after this one. I'll try to remember to include that Iraq video, but there's a decent chance I forget. As I said, it's quite easy to search for. You can also find me on Twitter, Instagram, or threads via the username at HITC7s on all three, and all of those links, plus a whole lot more, should be down in the video description below.