An entire football team disappeared without a trace in Sweden during a tournament (3 photos)

Scandinavia is the setting for a good crime film. This year, 1,956 teams from 78 countries, including four from Ethiopia, participated in the Gothia Cup, or World Junior Cup.





Ethiopian boys aged 14 to 17, along with their coaches, came to Gothenburg for the Gothia Cup (the world's largest youth tournament). On the day of the final matches, organizers visited the school building where the Ethiopian athletes were staying for the competition and found the rooms completely empty. The teenagers and the adults accompanying them packed their things, quietly slipped out of the building, and disappeared in an unknown direction.

Swedish law enforcement immediately dismissed the kidnapping theory. Police have been searching for them for over 10 days, but the situation has escalated into an international scandal. When the news reached Africa, the Ethiopian Football Federation (EFF) immediately issued an urgent statement along the lines of "we have nothing to do with it." Officials tearfully asked the press not to refer to the fugitives as the "national team." It turns out they were an ordinary private academy that had found its own sponsors, obtained its own Schengen visa, and flown off to conquer Europe.



Swedish police confirmed that this was a 100% voluntary escape for the purpose of illegal migration and refugee status. Moreover, several teenagers have already quietly called their relatives in Ethiopia and reported that they are alive, healthy, well-fed, and "safe." Naturally, the boys have no plans to surrender to the authorities and have likely already dispersed to various European cities to join local diasporas.

The Gothia Cup management is shocked by this setup. Tournament press secretary Fredrik Backman stated that they had been friends with the club for many years and never expected a stab in the back. To deter others from using football as a free ticket to the European Union, the tournament's bosses have made a radical decision: Ethiopia will be permanently and completely banned from the Gothia Cup. No other team from that country will participate in the tournament.



Before finally switching off his phones, the Ethiopian team coordinator managed to send a farewell email to the organizers. He politely thanked the Swedes for their hospitality and care, and attributed the mass disappearance of 20 people to... "minor communication problems." Yeah, they just misunderstood where the bus to the airport was and accidentally ended up in the Swedish woods.

This is, incidentally, a classic in African sports – teams from Eritrea have regularly pulled similar stunts before. But to do it like this, with their coaches and equipment, under the pretext of "lost in translation" – that's certainly five stars for ingenuity.