With the World Cup finally underway, soccer-loving Russians are getting dirty playing the beautiful game. In the northern Leningrad region, mud-caked footballers have spurned conventional pitches and are playing in knee-deep swamps, leaving them exhausted, filthy and laughing. The bizarre and dirty sport saw competitors face off in the village of Pogi this weekend for a championship that would see one team out of nine crowned supreme swamp soccer stars. The players in this small village were see

While FIFA delegations inspect fresh and smooth pitches at the World Cup 2018 venues, Russian football lovers show that their favorite game is suitable for any terrain. A group of St Petersburg enthusiasts adopted one of the toughest variants - a Northern Russian swamp soccer. A game invented in Finland to train the stamina of athletes in other sports is 'as good as big football' in terms of physical training, a player Alexei Guryanov explains. According to media, several hundred teams emerged w

Swamp football action in Finland

Russian swamp football players competed in the National Championship outside the city of St. Petersburg. The match includes two halves of 13 minutes. Each team has five players and a goalkeeper, who play in a swamp field, which is 60 metres in length and 35 metres in width. | China Xinhua News