Biggest Soccer Upsets Ever - Ranking the Top 5
What are the greatest upsets in the history of soccer? I’ll now present you with five feats no one expected to happen.
Soccer is the most popular sport on Earth, with a Nielsen study from a few years ago suggesting that there are more than 3.2 billion people who consider themselves soccer fans.
One of the reasons for this is that this sport is somewhat unpredictable. In the 160+ years of soccer, there have been some huge upsets, the biggest of which I’m going to focus on in this post.
Jose Mourinho’s Porto Wins the 2003-04 Champions League
Jose Mourinho a.k.a. The Special One is thought of as one of the GOATs in the soccer coaching business, with three Premier League titles, two Serie A titles, and one La Liga title. He also has two Champions League trophies in his cabinet, one of which he won with Porto in 2004.
This feat remains one of the biggest surprises in club soccer as Mourinho’s team was a huge betting underdog. In fact, some offshore sportsbooks were giving +5000 odds on Porto winning the title that year.
In fact, just seven years before winning the title, they played in League One, which is the third tier of the English soccer league system. How did the Foxes pull it off?
They owe a great deal to their manager at the time, Claudio Ranieri who used his trademark 4-4-2 strategy to get the most out of his men. Of course, that wouldn’t work if he didn’t have players like Jamie Vardy, N’Golo Kante, and others at his disposal.