As the Pepsi League reaches the halfway point of the 2019 season, KR Reykjavík—the black ‘n’ white magpies of Vesturbær—show no signs of letting up in their domination of Iceland’s top division. Having won all five of their last games, they’re sitting pretty at the top of the table, seven points clear of their nearest rivals, swashbuckling Kópavogar side Breiðablik.
Meanwhile, the current Pepsi League title-holders—our heroic 101 boys, Valur—are still recovering from a supremely shaky start, and are currently clawing their way back from mid-table ignominy. And this is despite reuniting three of the national team’s heroic Euro 2016 and World Cup smiters—Hannes Halldórsson, Kári Árnason and Birkir Már Sævarsson—in their defence.
This lack of drama at the top of the table hasn’t affected the amount of people turning out to see games. It was announced this month that the total Pepsi League attendance so far is 76,646 over the 68 matches that have been played to date, with an average attendance of 1,127 per game.
For context, Old Trafford—the stadium of Manchester United—has a capacity of 75,653. This means that, in theory, you could reduce the amount of Pepsi League game-days to two, selling out Old Trafford each time. Of course, all the teams would have to play simultaneously to make this work, so you’d have to have 12 goals on the pitch, perhaps in a large circle. All the teams would be playing at once, so there’d be 132 players running at each other in this Braveheart-battle-scene free-for-all football spectacular.
If anyone at KSÍ or FIFA is reading, they’re obviously going to want to make this new take on the beautiful game happen. Drop us an email at grapevine@grapevine.is. The future of sport beckons.
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