IF YOU THINK BITING ANOTHER PLAYER IS BAD, WAIT UNTIL YOU HEAR WHAT HAPPENED IN 1962

As we’ve already seen in this World Cup, it’s a player-bite-player world on the soccer pitch. But it gets worse. When Chile hosted in 1962, it was still recovering from the biggest earthquake in recorded history.

Not very compassionate, two Italian journalists wrote about what a dump the place was and what a bunch of yahoos the locals were. Their articles were reprinted in Chilean papers and the bad blood was on. Italians, and people the locals mistook for Italians, were jeered, abused and beaten up.

The first foul came 12 seconds into the match. English ref Ken Aston tried to take control and when Italian Giorgio Ferrini blatantly fouled Chile’s Honorino Landa, he ejected him.

If only it were that easy. Ferrini wouldn’t leave and was eventually grabbed and pulled, kicking and screaming, off the pitch by Chilean cops. It got worse,Landa punched an Italian in full view of Aston, but the ref let it go. He allowed another punch by Chile’s Leonel Sánchez to Italy’s Mario David, after Sanchez had been fouled by David. Naturally David booted Sanchez in the face as soon as he could.

That Aston could not ignore, and he sent David off. Sanchez, still seething, sent a nasty left to Italian Humberto Maschio, which broke his nose.

That was it for Aston, who acted like a WWE ref from then on out. The cops did return to the pitch three more times, though, to keep things from getting out of hand. Chile won 2-0, but that didn’t matter much.

The real reason everyone remembers the Battle of Santiago, as the game came to be known, was that it was the inspiration for the red and yellow disciplinary cards used today. There was also a 1969 war between Honduras and El Salvador over a soccer game that cost 3,000 lives, but that wasn’t at the World Cup.