Squirrel Stops Tigers In Their Tracks .... TWICE: the Strangest Football Stoppages Ever

Mammal Mayhem, Floodlight Fever and Retching Refs - The Weirdest Stoppages of All Time

Football, despite its setting as a game played in front of tens of thousands of people, located within an architectural monstrosity at the center of the world’s largest cities, is a game that is inextricably linked with nature.

Football would not have become what it is today without its early teething problems encountered in parks and fields all over the country - balls getting stuck in trees, rain and wind making a pass or shot impossible to judge, and waterlogged penalty spots the size of a small bomb crater—these are the everyday man’s fondest memories on the football field.

Pitch invasion by squirrel. 15 bloody minutes to get her out. 🤣 pic.twitter.com/6JeFRmIl0Q

— Manni (@ManniGT) February 7, 2026

But one natural wonder above all else continues to interrupt professional football matches more regularly than any other—wildlife. In defeat to Bristol City at the MKM Stadium yesterday, Hull City saw their fixture postponed thanks to a squirrel streaking across the pitch.

A comedic chase ensued, and eventually the rodent was captured. However, somehow it returned and wreaked yet more havoc, stopping the game again. Only after visiting multiple advertising hoardings and running onto the field of play was it captured for good.

It got us thinking—what are the weirdest ever interruptions to a game of football? Strap yourselves in, because this is a good one.

A World Cup Ghost Goal

Though the Senegal national team was called off the pitch in the AFCON final just a few weeks ago, the trend for removing players from the pitch was actually founded more than 40 years earlier, when Kuwait played France at the 1982 World Cup.

Trailing 3-1 to Les Bleus in a group stage fixture, things were already looking bad for the Arabic nation, and when Alain Giresse found the net to make the score 4-1, the game was at risk of becoming a rout.

However, there was uproar in the Kuwait ranks, as prior to the goal, the entire side had stopped playing after allegedly hearing a whistle that could only have been that of referee Miroslav Stupar. Despite the clear confusion and unfair goal, the referee allowed it to stand, to the complete outrage of everyone backing Kuwait.

That Brazilian team were simply stunning in the 1982 World Cup.#Brazil pic.twitter.com/OiEtfACDQ7

— TV Football 1968-92 (@1968Tv) September 26, 2024

The nation’s president of the FA, Prince Fahid, even came onto the pitch and demanded the goal be chalked off, and when he didn’t get what he wanted, he ordered his players to leave the field, which they duly did. They only agreed to re-enter the field of play when the referee finally caved to the pressure and reverted the score back to 3-1.

Fortunately for France, the disallowed goal didn’t affect the outcome, and they managed to find the net a fourth time anyway through Maxime Bossis. In the wake of the incident, Fahid was fined, and Stupar was banned from refereeing international football ever again.

Liverpool’s Infamous Kop Cat

Fast-forwarding 30 years to 2012 and to a high-stakes Premier League clash between Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur at Anfield.

Both sides had European ambitions for the season and would have appreciated as smooth a path to their goals as possible. However, the local pet population had other ideas, as just 11 minutes into the match, a grey and white tabby cat took to the pitch and nonchalantly walked across it.

Strutting around as if he owned the place, he wandered around Tottenham goalkeeper Brad Friedel’s penalty area before making himself comfortable and lying down, forcing play to a halt. While human pitch invaders are allowed to be taken down with force, the same cannot be said of animal intruders.

enjoyed my quick run around on the hallowed anfield turf #anfieldcat #meow

— Anfield Cat (@AnfieIdCat) February 6, 2012

However, likely getting bored of the lack of things to chase, the cat, known as Shankly, got up after a couple of minutes and wandered over towards the sidelines and allowed himself to be gently removed from the field by a waiting steward.

It was a bizarre, if wholesome, interruption and, moreover, was the most exciting thing to happen during the 90 minutes of play, as the game ended in a goalless draw.

Floodlight Failures

It always astonishes me that a floodlight failure has the potential to postpone a match – they are a bare minimum requirement for evening and nighttime kick-offs, so the fact that they don’t work perfectly every single time seems like a bit of an oversight, to say the least.

Over the years, countless games have been plunged into darkness with no warning – Wimbledon suffered multiple outages in the late 90s, leading to the apt nickname of “Dimbledon”; a host of EFL fixtures have also undergone lighting issues, and it’s not just lower league teams who risk playing in pitch blackness.

An outage actually happened at Wembley Stadium in February 2025 as England women prepared to take on Spain in a rematch of the 2023 World Cup final clash. Having played the first 45 minutes with no electrical incident, the lights went out shortly after the second half began.

City v. Leicester, December 2014, when the floodlights failed. #hcafc pic.twitter.com/Y85xEUHVE7

— HCK (Les) (@HullCityKits) February 2, 2026

It was a bizarre sight - the advertising hoardings were still aglow with their various messages, but the lights focused at the pitch were as dead as doorknobs. Fans tried to help in their own way, with many turning on their phone torches in a bid to increase visibility, but there was a considerable wait for the actual floodlights to come back on.

Eventually, they reignited, and England were able to avenge their World Cup final defeat with a 1-0 victory over their continental rivals. More pressingly though, it underlines that even state-of-the-art facilities and the biggest fixtures are never safe from faulty equipment.

Retching Referees

While not technically interrupting a match, this list would not be the same without this inclusion. In 1963, Real Betis were scheduled to face Valencia in a La Liga clash, and the officials were going through all their pre-match preparations as normal. That is, until they got to eating.

Both the referee and a linesman fell ill in the hours preceding the game with food poisoning, likely from their own specific choice of pre-game snack. As such, the Spanish FA had to find some backup officials ASAP if the fixture was to go ahead as planned.

However, there was further bad news, as the officials selected to come in and replace their fallen comrades failed to reach the game thanks to heavy traffic, and minutes before the fixture was scheduled to kick off, it was abandoned and rescheduled for later in the season.

One hopes the referees didn’t feel too queasy in the knowledge that their illness rescheduled an entire football match and left tens of thousands of match-going fans without entertainment for the evening!

Teammate Madness

Everyone knows about this one; the year is 2005, and Newcastle are trailing Aston Villa 3-0. As the losing side, tensions are naturally running high between teammates, but even so, the thousands inside St James’ Park had to scratch their eyes and do a double take when they saw Lee Bowyer and Kieron Dyer fighting.

And this was no war of words - this was a full-on fistfight as both men looked to genuinely harm each other. Bowyer came away from the altercation with a badly torn shirt, while both were clearly seething with each other. The battle lasted less than 10 seconds, as both Newcastle and Villa players swiftly stepped in to separate the two, but the damage was already done.

Both men were sent off, and as both left the field, captain Alan Shearer was seen rightly giving Bowyer a piece of his mind, while manager Graeme Souness could be seen lamenting the two red cards, having already lost Steven Taylor to a sending off for his infamous handball on the goal line earlier in the match.

Kieron Dyer talking about his bust up with Lee Bowyer 🤣 #NUFC pic.twitter.com/odTb0VyZPz

— ToonArmy (@toonarmy_com) March 30, 2023

The scuffle reportedly broke out because Bowyer believed that Dyer was intentionally not giving him the ball, and as such, he got in the Englishman’s face and levelled those accusations at him. Dyer clearly did not appreciate how Bowyer went about this, and punches were quickly thrown.

The club scapegoated Bowyer, as slow-motion replays showed him throwing punches while Dyer simply grappled in self-defence, and the midfielder was fined a then record of six weeks' wages, equating to roughly £210,000.

Amazingly, the two would reunite later on in their careers at West Ham, and it was clear their relationship had improved since their infamous falling out. Dyer put paid to any rumours of a rivalry between the two, saying their relationship was as healthy as could be in an interview in 2014.