FC Copenhagen dead rats

Something was truly rotten in the state of Denmark Monday, as a soccer match was interrupted by a rain of dead rats. Near the end of Monday’s Danish Superliga clash between first-place FC Copenhagen and second-place Brøndby IF, Brøndby fans threw dead rats at Copenhagen players. Here’s video of the disturbing scene:

As Sports Illustrated‘s Dan Gartland noted, what’s particularly disturbing here is that these fans hung on to the dead rats for almost two hours of game time, only throwing them near the end of the match when Copenhagen’s Ludwig Augustinsson lined up for a corner. Presuming there was some sort of security screening, where were they keeping them? Or do we want to know?

Tossing dead rats at players appears to be a new one. We’ve seen drinks thrown at players, we’ve seen dead animals tossed (like the Detroit Red Wings’ octopi, much to PETA’s chagrin), and we’ve even seen plastic rats (thrown on the ice by Florida Panthers fans, starting with the 1995-96 NHL season after Scott Mellanby killed a rat in the locker room and then scored two goals), but dead rats is something else. This is a significant rivalry, especially with the teams being just eight miles apart and one space apart in the standings, but is it one worthy of rodent-tossing?

This move certainly seemed to perturb the Copenhagen players a bit, too. They look pretty annoyed as they’re kicking these rats away. But hey, at least Copenhagen hung on to win 1-0. And at least the fans didn’t throw dead gerbils.

[Sports Illustrated]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.