– The first thing I thought when I saw their club crest was "that lion is not feeling well", says the spokesperson for Sporting Kansas supporters club.
If you are to believe a series of tweets written on tuesday from "Kansas City Cauldron", the name of their supporters club, they are "really pissed" at the blue and white club from Gothenburg. Just look at this:
"WE ARE COMING FOR YOU IFK GOTEBORG"
"IFK GOTEBORG YOU ARE NOW OUR ENEMIES"
"IT IS SUPER DANGEROUS TO LET A LION WHO IS OBVIOUSLY HIGH AS HELL HAVE A SWORD AND COSPLAY AS A KING"
IT IS SUPER DANGEROUS TO LET A LION WHO IS OBVIOUSLY HIGH AS HELL HAVE A SWORD AND COSPLAY AS A KING pic.twitter.com/UKEJ5TzpMu
— The Cauldron (@KCCauldron) December 26, 2017
That last sneering remark is a reference to the lion in IFK Göteborgs crest. The Cauldron finished of their tweets with a poll, asking their followers to answer this simple question: What is worst; IFK Göteborg or a deadly decease?
24 hours and 300 votes later the answer was pretty clear – 79 procent thought that IFK Göteborg was worse.
So what's the reason for all this good-natured fun? Why did an american supporters club go all bananas towards a Swedish team?
The reason is some statistical data from the american sports site "FiveThirtyEight". They've compiled a list ranking all european clubs on a number of different parameters from each game played in 2017, such as how many goals a team is expected to score and concede and how many points they're expected to accumulate.
The ranking was updated on the 26 of december with Barcelona topping the list, closely followed by Real Madrid and Bayern Munich.
Sporting Kansas City are number 335 on the list and – here comes the kicker in this ironic beef – IFK Göteborg are one place above them at 334.
The person behind the ironic tweets is Zachary Cobb. He's a part of The Cauldron and responsible for their twitter account that has almost 30 000 followers. He says it's pure coincidence that IFK Göteborg became the subject of their fake uproar:
– Ahead of the new update I decided that, with a big chunk of irony, I would go rough on the club that was placed right above Kansas City.
What did you know about IFK Göteborg?
– I had only heard the name. Then I started reading about them and was pleasantly surprised. I learned that they have a lot of supporters and they are passionate. In that way they remind me a lot of Kansas City.
But you don't really like the lion on the crest, right?
– The first thing I thought when I saw their club crest was "that lion is not feeling well". It's either drunk or on drugs. And a drunk or drugged up lion should really not be threatening people with a sword, I stand by that.
Which one is worse?
— The Cauldron (@KCCauldron) December 26, 2017
Originally Zachary Cobb did not intend for the taunts on twitter to amount to any sort of relationship between the two clubs. And so far it's a one way rivalry, as he hasn't heard anything from IFK Göteborgs end:
– If we could start some sort of friendly rivalry from all this it would be great, we like to establish new contacts. It could become the worlds biggest rivalry in football that started out of nothing!
The taunts from Sporting Kansas Citys supporters club hasn't created any sour faces at IFK Göteborg, quite the opposite. The right back Emil Salomonsson hasn't had the time to go through the aforementioned tweets from The Cauldron but says that he likes the idea:
– It sounds fun! I haven't really thought about the idea of having more rivals than we already do, especially not from another country. But this just seems like a jest and I really like people that do things with a quip. USA is a great country for a holiday, so maybe we (IFK Göteborg) can go there for a training camp and face Kansas City in a game?
