Here’s a Euro 2012 quiz question from the guy who used to do the pub quizzes I attended in the UK:
What links Jakub Blaszczykowski, who scored for Poland yesterday against Russia, with ex-Denmark midfielder Stig Tøfting, who played in Euro 2000?
Don’t bother with football. Forget your thoughts about implausibly large Scrabble scores or tenuous ties to Top Gear. The actual answer is far more bizarre.
As a child, Blaszczykowski witnessed a tragedy, which had a major influence on his life. When he was eleven years old, his father stabbed his mother to death.
During the 2002 World Cup, Danish weekly gossip magazine Se & Hør ran a story that Tøfting, when aged 13, had returned home from school to find the bodies of his parents. His mother had been shot by his father, who shortly thereafter turned the gun on himself. The story had been kept secret for years, as Tøfting had not yet told his children.
Ah. The delicate subject of matricide. A crime which, somewhat ironically, probably increases during major football tournaments.