Extreme Alpine Soccer: the football played on impossible mountain slopes

Did you know that a group of Austrian footballers has invented a new extreme sport, the “Alpine Soccer”?
And this is rumoured to be football at its toughest, as it’s only played on the steepest Alpine slopes…

Everything is harder in the Alps, and football is no different.
Green slopes, cows, delicious cheese and traditional dresses: there are so many stereotypical things we expect to find there, and football wouldn’t tend to be one of them.
Yet a group of locals from Montafon in Austria see things a little differently. According to them, the football played elsewhere is easy – anyone can do it – so they’ve taken it up a notch.
Level areas the size of football pitches are rarely found in the Alps and, when you do find one, it’s usually being used for something else.
This is why Extreme Alpine Soccer was invented.
They came up with the idea during the 2014 World Cup, while watching a boring game and brainstorming for ways to spice it up a little bit.

“We were watching the games and found them very boring,” alpine football co-inventor Franz Mair said. “Then, Peppi (Peppi Knünz, the other inventor of the sport) said to me: ‘The way they play isn’t hard enough and they should try running up and down our mountains. They’d soon be out of breath…’ And then we thought: ‘They might not even be able to play – but us and our lads, we’d manage it!‘”

“Anyone can play on flat pitches,” says Alois Gantner, trainer of the ‘Supa Burschis’ team. “In Montafon, we only play on the steepest slopes we can find.”

The rules of extreme alpine football are the same as for the regular version, with the only difference that
Extreme Alpine Soccer players need a lot of strength and stamina in order to cope with the high physical demands of playing in the mountains.
Well…despite it looks intriguing and fun…what happens when the ball starts rolling downhill every few seconds?
Who goes down after it, only to have to make the climb back up to the field?…

Article by Michal P. Thank you!

Images from web – Google Research