Cristiano Ronaldo, England and Everton have been the subject of football’s greatest on-field incursions

The woke police and Cristiano Ronaldo will say football’s pitch invasion shouldn’t be celebrated, but it has produced some great moments.

They always feel like a welcome little relief and we love watching them keep running and falling over. This week we celebrate 10 pitch invaders.

Tottenham vs West Ham
A classic of the genre. Tottenham are preparing for a free kick just outside the penalty area and our pitch invader emerges from the crowd in the far right corner, unsuccessfully pursued by two stewards. Our man goes straight for the ball, waits for the free kick and hits it towards the top corner, but is able to parry it and continues his run into the crowd with the stewards close behind. To be fair, I have seen worse free kicks from players pretending to be professionals.

Barnsley vs Manchester United
United are leading by two players and are playing injury time as their goalkeeper is about to take a goal kick from inside the six-yard box before being ambushed by two attackers working together as a deadly attacking partnership. One of them keeps running and immediately falls over, gets up and crosses briefly to his partner, who confidently brings him to the finish with his side foot. They run away cheering, pursued in a hardly sporting manner by a portly steward. To be fair, United signed them for £60m and they were more effective than Joshua Zirkzee.

Luxembourg versus Russia
At first this boy trots deceptively across the field, but is then subjected to a pincer movement by two stewards who attempt to suppress the man’s free spirit. But he shows remarkable speed in a short sprint, dodging both as they crash into each other like in a slapstick comedy, and he accelerates toward the finish while another steward pursues him. He throws himself headfirst into the goal, his exhibitionist tendencies satisfied. I bet it was more entertaining than the game.

Manchester United vs Atalanta
In Cristiano RonaldoThe stadium bosses naturally adore him, so he is not surprised when a fan runs almost the entire length of the pitch to get to him when leaving the pitch. Here comes the fan, with four safety vests at different paces in pursuit, one of which pulls off a great pratfall as the fan reaches CR7 and tugs at his shirt, whereupon the stewards catch him and Cristiano coolly takes it like any messiah who has never scored a single legitimate goal for Portugal would.

Eastleigh v Bolton
Following the great tradition, the pitch invader runs to catch up with the play, arms outstretched, when he suddenly realizes what is in front of him and senses his chance to score. Everyone continues to play like a man in sportswear and an orange cap is not one of them. The ball is cleared at the last minute, causing our man to skid to a stop and fall over. His chance to be a hero is suddenly gone.

FC Cincinnati vs. Orlando City
A mother is sitting with her two-year-old watching the game when the child does what toddlers usually do, which is something unexpected and stupid. He ducks effortlessly under the fence and shoots up the field at pace as the game shifts, in that unfocused way that all field invaders have. For a small child he rushes quite quickly and unrestrainedly. His mother also has to enter the field to save him in the awkward way familiar to every parent whose child she has shown up.

England vs Ireland
As the players line up for the pre-game anthems, they are joined by a tall, well-fed guy who takes a position at the end of the line as if it were the most natural thing and not someone making a YouTube joke about Old England kit . Antony Gordon looks at him askance, but perhaps mistakes his corpulent form for a teammate. Everyone is so afraid to say or do anything that the incident passes without anyone laughing and telling them he’s the new Frank Lampard, before three guys in suits spot the intruder and take him away.

Everton vs Newcastle
When you step onto a field and tie yourself to a post by your neckYou have to have courage and work for a good cause, such as preserving the planet as a habitable place so that we don’t have to fly to Mars with Elon Musk. That’s exactly what a Just Stop Oil protester did, only to be confronted by a wide-faced man with his bolt cutters, which didn’t seem to work very well. He attacks the collars with the kind of enthusiasm I associate with Sam Allardyce eating a battered sausage while expending a lot of energy accomplishing nothing. And the earth is still burning.

Chelsea vs Juventus
An unusual example of a pitch invader in women’s football. The stupid guy starts straight up and doesn’t even run in the stupid way most people put their feet up. It looks like he wants to film himself to post on social media and he holds up his phone, feeling very smart and has never been anywhere with 22 women. But Sam Kerr is of a less tolerant Australian toughness, despises such self-indulgence and fearlessly charges him shoulder-to-shoulder to the ground where he is dragged away, hopefully feeling silly and glad she didn’t decide to bash his head in .

Finally, I’m not sure where this happened, possibly in Norwich. The video is hilarious, taken from behind the goal. Our speculative pitch invader climbs over the billboard to begin his magical moment. However, he is a chubby boy and a little unstable, so he almost immediately falls over behind the net and collapses at the feet of the stewards, who grab him and lead him away. In a second he went from hero to zero.

MORE FROM PITCHINVADERS365
👉 Want to solve football’s “pitch invasion crisis”? Deal with the divs and respect the rest
👉 There is no pitch invasion in popular sports that people don’t like