The 2018 FIFA World Cup may be over, but Russian athletes have been throwing themselves into a lesser-known (and far more bizarre) sport: swamp soccer.
Footage shared by Russian network Current Time on July 13 shows amateur soccer players battling it out in a bog in Pogi, near Saint Petersburg, as they struggle through the peat to win this year’s swamp football championship.
The sport sees both men and women playing on the same team, and is so strenuous that each game only last 20 minutes. “You either walk or crawl on all fours. Crawling is easier, of course,” Aleksei Suyetov, an avid player, says in the video.
The game originated in Finland, where a World Championship is hosted every year. Hopefully the Russians will have a better chance becoming the champions of the bog than the champions of the World Cup! Credit: Current Time via Storyful
