#1 Morten Wieghorst’s misses a penalty on purpose
We end with somewhat of an odd incident from an international match in 2003 between Denmark and Iran. As the game approached half-time, an Iranian player heard a whistle from the crowd that he misinterpreted as coming from the referee and figured the half was over. And so he made the error of picking the ball up inside his own penalty area – with his hands – before booting it towards the halfway line.
The referee naturally had no choice but to point to the spot and award the Danes a penalty. But after a quick chat with his coach Morten Olsen, midfielder Morten Wieghorst decided against looking to score, instead side-footing the penalty wide to the right of the goal, essentially giving it up entirely. The Iranian players were amazed and applauded Wieghorst, while their fans gave him a standing ovation – assumingly not by using whistles.
Wieghorst’s team went on to lose the game 1-0 but in a cool consolation prize, he was given an Olympic Committee fair play award for his courageous and sportsmanlike actions in the bizarre incident.
