World Cup Drinking Games

The World Cup is the greatest 4 weeks for any avid soccer fan. This tournament is the true testament of which country has bred the best soccer team (or it’s just where FIFA’s favorite team gets rewarded).  Soccer is the world’s unifying sport and this is its biggest event. Everyone is part of it.

But for non-soccer fans, the World Cup is something you’re just obligated to pay attention to and likely to drink during. For some people, soccer is just hard to watch. You don’t have to feel guilty about it. Everyone’s got preferences. We’re not here to judge you; we’re here to help you. For any massive sporting event, all you need is a drinking game to enjoy the tournament as much as everyone else.

There are many ways that drinking games can help improve your view on the World Cup, both in its unpredictability and its laughable clichés. It’s got everything! There are hundreds of drinking games out there for the World Cup. We’ve created our own and incorporated our favorite rules as well as a few fresh ones of our own. Enjoy!

What you need:

• Beer. You need beer.
• To choose a player at the beginning of a game: he doesn’t have to be your favorite player. You just need to choose a player, as his behavior during the game might allow you to force others into drinking. Please note that each player can only be selected once (not everyone can have dibs on Balotelli).

Take a Drink For Every…

Injury

If the World Cup is the only time you watch soccer, you’ve probably noticed how fragile its players are. A simple nudge from an opponent will send players to the ground faster than a lineman’s tackle would. Some teams are really good at milking these injuries. The Italian team is probably the most famous in this art. Why not capitalize on this weakness and turn it into a drinking game?

The Rule: Every time an “injury” stops the game’s play, you have to take a drink. This pretty much happens every time a player is on the ground and refuses to get up. Be prepared for a lot of this, as we’ve already seen the humid Brazilian weather causing frequent cramps and heat exhaustion.

 

Red Cards and Yellow Cards

  Remember when we said to choose a player at the beginning of the match? Here’s why:

The Rule: If your player gets yellow carded, then you assign a full beer to anyone in the room and they have to chug it. You must do this by retrieving the beer yourself and raising it above your victim for all to see (much like a referee does with a yellow card).

If your player gets red carded, then you get to assign two chugging drinks through the same celebratory carding gesture. You can assign either one to two different people, or you can assign two drinks to one person. Also, the red card victims must sit under a table until they finish their drinks. It’s a cruel world.

“Gooooooal” Length

If an announcer such as Fernando Palomo is covering the game, they’re likely to guarantee a drawn-out “Gooooooooooooooooooooooal!” once a goal is scored. These can sometimes last around twenty seconds. It’s a staple at this point.

The Rule: You have to chug your beer for the entire duration of the word “goal” when a goal is scored. If he ends up drawing it out for twenty seconds, then your work is cut out for you. Once he stops, you can put your beer down and breathe.

Hint: Fernando Palomo is the voice for the Mexican National Team, so you can expect to hear him for all of Mexico’s games and for other South and Central American teams. He gets excited pretty easily and should bring you a good amount of drinking material.

Goal Line Technology

FIFA just cannot get enough of its new goal line technology. It’s so fortunate that we can now see that the ball does cross the goal line before hitting the net at 70 miles per hour. How did we get this far without it? The Rule: when Goal Line Technology is used after a goal, everyone must chug their beers down to meet the emptiest active beer in the room. For example, if everyone watching the game has a fresh beer, but one person has their drink half-finished, everyone else has to polish their drink down to meet the half-finished level when goal line technology is shown. It’s technology, people. Respect it.

Free Kicks

Whenever there’s a free kick, you’ll notice that the players make a wall and jump up to try and block the ball from entering their goal area. Whenever a free kick is announced (not taken), everyone has to jump up and cover their groins. The last person to do this has to drink. If you do the free kick jump without the announcement of a free kick, you also have to drink. Overzealousness does not pay off here…

 

Penalty Kicks

With a penalty kick, you decide your own drinking fate. As the kick is being taken, you have to shout out either “Goal” or “Miss”, depending on what you think will happen. If you predicted incorrectly, you have to take a drink. Anyone who doesn’t make a prediction also has to drink. Don’t be scared to take a chance, man.

Other

As you can tell, there’s a whole sea of World Cup events that can result in a beer flood. Occurrences such as injuries and free kicks can be guaranteed for every game, but yellow cards, red cards, and penalty kicks are much more sporadic: that’s why we place a little more drinking value on the less-frequent events.

• As for commonalities, here are a few more soccer match incidents that result in one drink:
• A player is offside
• Christ the Redeemer Statue is shown
• Commentator struggles to pronounce a name
• Commentator mentions the United States in a non-United States game
• Commentator uses the word “equalizer”
• Commentator says “they need to score” or makes any special note about the necessity to score in a soccer match
• The camera shows fans who get overly excited about on the jumbo screen (This is easy to pick out. If a fan is shown and they all the sudden point at something and start yelling with joy, they’re probably on the jumbo screen).

This should keep your party nice and busy during the World Cup. Remember: drink responsibly but have a good time!