The Sweeper is a football podcast unlike any other. Once a week, journalists Lee Wingate and Paul Watson bring you unique and quirky football headlines and stories from across Europe and the wider world that you won’t hear elsewhere. Whether it’s San Marino’s 20-year winless run, Greenland’s week-long season or the two-team league in the Scilly Isles, The Sweeper does not focus on Europe’s top five leagues - but instead casts its net across FIFA’s 211 members and beyond. Join us for a whistle-stop tour of the football world every Wednesday. Episodes are released at midnight CET.
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The Belgian Cup arcade claw draw, Turkmenistan’s debutant champions & the Botafogo bottle job in Brazil
Download Momento: acmomento.onelink.me/ckkf/SweeperPod
Once we found out that the draw for the Belgian Cup quarter-finals was conducted using a former footballer and an arcade claw machine, there was nowhere else we were going to start this episode. But domestic cup competitions across Europe have produced plenty of other notable stories over the past fortnight too, including another Bundesliga scalp for third-tier Saarbrücken in the DFB-Pokal, Copa del Rey elimination at the hands of fourth-division sides for Almería and Cadíz, and some unlikely Coupe de France victories for Caribbean clubs. And there’s also some love for our brand-new sponsor Momento to round off Part 1.
Part 2 begins in Costa Rica, where the women’s team claimed an unlikely 19-0 victory over St. Kitts & Nevis to beat Haiti to qualification for the Gold Cup, before moving onto Monday night’s controversial incident in Türkiye, where a brutal assault on referee Halil Umut Meler by the Ankaragücü president Faruk Koca has led to all football in the country being suspended indefinitely. We then turn our attentions to Saudi Arabia, where an unfortunate defender gave away one of the weirdest penalties you will ever see when he tried to high-five his goalkeeper but ended up touching the ball instead.
Finally, in Part 3, we discuss a team in Turkmenistan that won the league but probably shouldn’t have and a Brazilian club that probably should have won the championship but did not. That’s right: it’s the stories of Arkadag, the team newly founded by former dictator Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov that have won the title without dropping a point in their debut season, and Botafogo, who have completed one of the most spectacular bottle jobs in football history to throw away what would have been their first Serie A title since 1995. There’s also a mention for Pele, our Patreon and some of the stupidest Guinness world records in existence.
RUNNING ORDER:
Part 1: The Croky Cup arcade claw draw, Rod Stewart’s legendary Scottish Cup cameo and Caribbean success stories in the Coupe de France (00:48)
Part 2: Goals galore for the Costa Rican women, a Turkish football meltdown in the Süper Lig and the weirdest penalty of all time in Saudi Arabia (17:18)
Part 3: The brand-new club from a brand-new city, Turkmenistan’s bizarre world records and Botafogo’s spectacular bottle job (35:18)
The Croky Cup arcade claw draw: www.youtube.com/live/KAbc8zn_BqI?si=gDtsalyNRrnpSkUR
John Oliver on Turkmenistan: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9QYu8LtH2E&t=1088s