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British soccer team loses 55-0.

Think you're having a bad season? Think again. The goalkeeper for Madron FC of Britian's Cornwall Mining League, on average, picks the ball out of his own net once every 4.36 minutes. After losing its opening matches by the relatively modest margins of 11-0, 4-1 and 16-0, the team slumped to 27-0 and 27-1 defeats before succumbing, two sorry Saturdays ago, to a monumental 55-0 thrashing.

The squad did rebound last Saturday, as it were, losing just 22-0.

In 11 matches this season, says stand-in team manager Alan Davenport, Madron have scored two goals and conceded 227. It's a degree of sporting incompetence that has won the team admiring mentions not just in the national press, but in sporting newspapers as far afield as France, Italy and even Brazil. Madron plays in the U.K.'s 13th-level league. (Think Premier League, then go down 12 notches.)
Davenport, who's also the club's secretary, treasurer and chairman, is not letting it get him down. "Morale's high," he says. "Heads are up. We're getting better."

A dispute over money lies at the root of the club's troubles. At the start of this season, its newly promoted first team walked out en masse when Davenport informed them they had to pay their subs. "Fourteen players – guys who hadn't lost a single match the whole of last season – just upped and left," he says. "Their manager had told them that they needn't pay, but we're a very small club . . . So I then had to put a scratch team together. For the first division."

The coach decided it would not be fair to plunder the club's second team, which could win its division this season. "So we played with who we could get," he says. "Unfortunately, that mostly means lads of 16 or 17 who haven't really played football before and can't get a game anywhere else. Often there aren't enough of them, either. In 11 games, we've fielded three full teams."

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Chilean Miners Play Soccer Friendly With Rescuers

The 33 Chilean miners who just emerged after two months trapped underground played in a friendly match against their rescuers last week. "[They're] great players," joked Chilean President Sebastián Piñera, "but they're a bit out of shape."

Led by Franklin Lobos, a former professional who won several international caps during the 1980s, Team Esperanza – Spanish for "hope" – came up short against the team of rescuers, 3-2. Though all of "Los 33" have made a full recovery from their ordeal, they were allowed to use rolling substitutions, to help them keep up with their opponents, who included the mining minister Laurence Golborne and several of their rescuers.

Despite the supposed advantage, Team Esperanza – whose players ranged in age from 19 to 63 – was unable to prevent the winning goal in the friendly, played at Chile's national stadium, being slotted home by Pinera.

Earlier in the day, the men had been presented with a special medal marking the 200th anniversary of Chile's independence, which fell while they were trapped inside the San Jose mine in the desert near Copiapo.

The game was arranged after the men were saved from underground, when rescuers visited them at the hospital in Copiapo. At the time, the President joked that the winners would get to sleep in La Mondea (the Presidential palace) for the night, while the losers would go back down the mine.