Sports-related curses

A sports-related curse is a superstitious belief in the effective action of some power or evil, that is used to explain the failures or misfortunes of specific sports teams, players, or even cities. Teams, players, and cities often cite a "curse" for many negative things, such as their inability to win a sports championship, or unexpected injuries.

American football

Detroit Lions

In 1958, the Detroit Lions traded Bobby Layne to the Pittsburgh Steelers, with Layne responding to the trade by supposedly saying that the Lions would "not win for 50 years". The veracity of this story has been disputed, particularly because the quote was never published at the time.

Despite this, in the 50 years after the trade, the Lions accumulated the worst winning percentage of the 12 teams in the National Football League (NFL) at the time, and are still one of only two franchises that were in the NFL prior to 1966 that have not yet played in the Super Bowl. The Lions' lone playoff win came against the Dallas Cowboys following the 1991 season.

When the Pittsburgh Steelers won their fifth Super Bowl championship in 2006, they won it at Ford Field, the Lions' current home stadium. Two years later – in the last year of the supposed curse – the Steelers won their sixth Super Bowl championship, while the Lions finished 0–16, the first team to lose every game of a 16-game season.

Philadelphia Eagles

This alleged curse supposedly prevented the Philadelphia Eagles franchise from winning the Super Bowl until Super Bowl LII.

The origin of this curse dates back to 1960, when the Eagles defeated the Vince Lombardi-coached Green Bay Packers to win the NFL Championship, which would be the only playoff loss in Lombardi's coaching career.

Following Lombardi's death in 1970, the League named the Super Bowl trophy in honor of his memory and his legacy.

This renaming of the trophy, combined with the Eagles' failures to win another Championship after 1960, led some Eagles fans to believe the franchise was cursed by Vince Lombardi: that being the only team to beat Lombardi in a playoff game meant never winning the trophy named after him.

During that time, the Eagles accumulated playoff heartbreaks that included two Super Bowl losses (to the then Oakland Raiders and New England Patriots), and three consecutive NFC Championship Game losses in 2001, 2002, and 2003.

The curse was broken in 2017 when the Eagles defeated the Patriots in Super Bowl LII to win their first Championship in 57 years – by coincidence, the Eagles' Championship drought lasted the same length as Lombardi's life.

''Madden NFL''

Prior to 1999, every annual installment of the ''Madden NFL'' video game franchise primarily featured John Madden on its cover. In 1999, Electronic Arts selected San Francisco 49ers running back Garrison Hearst to appear on the PAL version's cover, and has since featured one of the league's top players on every annual installment despite Madden's opposition.
While appearing on the cover has become an honor akin to appearing on the Wheaties box, much like the ''Sports Illustrated'' cover jinx, certain players who appeared on the ''Madden'' video game box art have experienced a decline in performance, usually due to an injury.

Super Bowl

The Super Bowl curse or Super Bowl hangover is a phrase referring to one of two things that occur in the National Football League (NFL): Super Bowl participant clubs that follow up with lower-than-expected performance the following year, and NFL teams that do not repeat as Super Bowl champions.

The phrase has been used to explain both why losing teams may post below-average winning percentages in the following year and why Super Bowl champions seldom return to the title game the following year. The term has been used since at least 1992, when ''The Washington Post'' commented that "the Super Bowl Curse has thrown everything it's got at the Washington Redskins. The Jinx that has bedeviled defending champs for 15 years has never been in better form". The phenomenon is attributed by football commentator and former NFL manager Charley Casserly to such elements as "a shorter offseason, contract issues, ndmore demand for your players' time". Casserly also notes that "once the season starts, you become the biggest game on everybody's schedule." Alleged curse notwithstanding, multiple teams have indeed repeated as Super Bowl champions, including the Green Bay Packers in the first two Super Bowls, the Pittsburgh Steelers twice in the 1970s, the Miami Dolphins also in the 1970s, the San Francisco 49ers in 1989 and 1990, the Dallas Cowboys in the 1990s, the Denver Broncos also in the 1990s, and the New England Patriots in the 2000s (decade), and there are multiple cases of teams reaching the conference championship or further up to four times in a row, including the 1990s Cowboys and Buffalo Bills, the 2000s Philadelphia Eagles, early 2010s San Francisco 49ers, the late 2010s-early 2020s Kansas City Chiefs (the latter two coached by Andy Reid), and most notably the 2010s New England Patriots who went to 8 straight AFC title games from 2011 through 2018, including three straight Super Bowl appearances from 2016 to 2018 winning two of them (Super Bowl LI) at the end of the 2016 season and Super Bowl LIII following the 2018 season.

Association football

Aaron Ramsey

Online users and tabloid journalists have written of a "Curse of Ramsey", in which celebrities die within hours of Welsh footballer Aaron Ramsey scoring regardless of where he plays. The phenomenon has been brought up after such high-profile deaths as those of Ted Kennedy, Osama bin Laden, Muammar Gadaffi, Steve Jobs, Whitney Houston, Robin Williams, Paul Walker, David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Nancy Reagan, Chester Bennington, Tommy Smith, Gregg Allman, Roger Moore, Stephen Hawking, Eric Bristow, Burt Reynolds, Mac Miller, George H. W. Bush, Keith Flint, Luke Perry, Gugu Liberato, Hosni Mubarak, Max von Sydow, June Brown & Olivia Newton-John.

Australia national team

In a story told in Johnny Warren's 2002 autobiography, ''Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters'', during a trip to play against Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the 1970 Mexico World Cup qualifiers in Mozambique, members of the Australia national soccer team (nicknamed the "Socceroos"), including Warren, consulted a witch doctor preceding their game. The witch doctor buried bones near the goal-posts and cursed the opposition, and Australia went on to beat Rhodesia 3–1 in the decider. However, the move backfired when the players could not come up with the £1000 demanded by the witch doctor as payment, so he cursed their team instead. Subsequently, the Socceroos failed to beat Israel and did not qualify.

Whilst the curse is used as an explanation for Australia failing to qualify for the World Cup for 32 years, including in the last match in the 1994, 1998 and 2002 qualifications, it is used in particular reference to the circumstances in which they failed to qualify for the 1998 tournament: needing a win against Iran in the final match of qualification, they drew 2–2, despite having led 2–0 in the second half of the match.

The curse was supposedly lifted by John Safran during episode 7 of his 2004 TV series ''John Safran vs God''. After reading the story in Warren's book, Safran travelled to Mozambique and hired a new witch doctor to channel the original to reverse the curse. The following year, the Socceroos not only qualified for the 2006 World Cup, but reached the second round before being beaten by eventual champions Italy in Kaiserslautern. The Socceroos have since qualified for the 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022 World Cups.

Australia did appear in the 1974 FIFA World Cup after the curse had been placed. However, they failed to score a goal in any of their three opening round matches, and were eliminated.

Bayer Leverkusen

German Bundesliga club Bayer 04 Leverkusen were given the nicknames "Neverkusen", "Vizekusen" (''vize'' meaning "second" in German) and "Bridesmaid of Europe" for its record during the 1990s to 2000s of reaching finals of major tournaments but failing to win, or finishing runner-up in the league. Bayer were runners-up in the Bundesliga for three out of four seasons between 1998–99 and 2001–02) and as of the 2022–23 season, have yet to win the title. The nicknames were popularised after the 2001–02 season when the club finished runner-up in the two major domestic competitions (league and cup) and the Champions League. Additionally, the German national team which finished runner-up to Brazil at the 2002 FIFA World Cup featured five Leverkusen players.

Benfica

Béla Guttmann, a former Hungarian footballer and then manager, joined Benfica in 1959 and coached the Portuguese club to two Primeira Liga titles, one Portuguese Cup and two European Cups. In 1962, after his second European Cup title, he reportedly asked for a pay raise but had his request turned down despite the great success he achieved at the Lisbon club, also having his contract terminated. Then, he allegedly said: "Not in a hundred years from now will Benfica ever be European champions." Benfica has appeared in five European Cup/UEFA Champions League finals and three UEFA Cup/UEFA Europa League finals since 1962 and did not win any. The alleged curse also extended to the UEFA Youth League, as Benfica's under-19 team lost three finals before winning the competition in 2021–22, thus breaking the "curse".

The veracity of this "curse", however, is disputed, as in April 1963, in an interview to ''A Bola'', Guttmann stated: "Benfica, at this moment, are well served and do not need me. They will win the Campeonato Nacional and will be champions of Europe again." According to David Bolchover, in his biography of Guttmann, the alleged curse was first mentioned in May 1988 by newspaper '' Gazeta dos Desportos'', the day Benfica played their fifth final. The "curse" had its origins in March 1968 when ''A Bola'' published a loose and unsigned translation from German to Portuguese of an interview given by Guttmann to '' Sport-Illustrierte'' five months earlier, in October 1967. Moreover, in November 2011, Eusébio, who was coached by Guttmann, also denied the existence of the curse, calling it a "lie".

Birmingham City

English football side Birmingham City F.C. played 100 years under an alleged curse from 1906 to 2006. As the legend goes, the club moved from nearby Muntz Street into its current location at St Andrew's, building the stadium on land that was being used by the Romani people. After they were forced to move, the angry Romani people put a 100-year hex on the stadium.

Throughout the years many Birmingham City managers would try to remove the curse but with little success. Former manager Ron Saunders tried to banish the curse in the 1980s by placing crucifixes on floodlights and painting the bottom of his players' boots red. Another manager, Barry Fry, in charge from 1993 to 1996, urinated in all four corners of the pitch after a clairvoyant said it would break the spell. On Boxing Day 2006 the curse was finally lifted and on that day Birmingham City celebrated a 2–1 win over Queens Park Rangers F.C. Just over four years after the alleged curse ended, Birmingham City finally won the first major final in their history – beating Arsenal 2–1 to win the 2010–11 Football League Cup. Birmingham City were relegated to the Football League Championship later that season, and have not been promoted back to the Premier League since.

Cruz Azul (Comizzo curse)

Origins of the curse began during the final of the Mexican League winter tournament in 1997, contested between Cruz Azul and Club León in a two-legged match. At the time they were the 3rd and fourth teams with the most league championships in Mexico respectively. Both teams were tied until the last moments of the second leg when Leon's goalkeeper Ángel Comizzo kicked Cruz Azul's star striker Carlos Hermosillo in the face, causing Hermosillo to bleed profusely inside the penalty area, leading to a foul and a penalty kick in Cruz Azul's favor. As the penalty was given, the referee asked Hermosillo to wipe the blood from his face, but Hermosillo ignored him and took the penalty kick, scoring a late winner. Cruz Azul became league champion for the eighth time in club history, but fans believed that both teams were cursed by the blood. Leon was then relegated to an inferior league in 2002 but since 2012 they were promoted back to the now-renamed Liga MX (formerly ''Primera División'') and would later become back-to-back league champions after defeating Club América in the 2013 Apertura playoffs, breaking their part of the curse.

On the other hand, Cruz Azul had lost several finals in the Mexican league, the CONCACAF Champions League, and the Copa Libertadores, many of them at the last minute, which had their part in the curse hold true. While Cruz Azul won the 2013 Clausura edition of the Copa MX and the CONCACAF Champions League in 2014, the club had yet to win their first league championship since 1997. Their multiple losses and inability to win any league championship has rival club fans bestow Cruz Azul with the mock title "''Sub-Campeonísimos''" (literally "Supreme Runner ups".) Additionally, the term "'Cruzazulear'" (Cruzazul-ing) was coined to describe whenever the team (or any team in general) loses in a humiliating fashion at the last minutes. The word is now in observation by the Royal Spanish Academy

The "curse" was eventually broken at the end of the 2021 Clausura finals, when Cruz Azul defeated Santos Laguna 2–1 on aggregate, thus achieving their first league title in over 23 years, and ninth overall.

Derby County F.C.

English football side Derby County were placed under a curse by a group of Romani Gypsies who were forced to move from a camp so that they could build their stadium, the Baseball Ground. The curse was that Derby County would never win the FA Cup. This mirrors the curse placed on Birmingham City F.C.

Despite reaching six FA Cup semi-finals between 1896 and 1903, including three finals, they never managed to win the trophy. The next time they reached the final was in 1946 against Charlton Athletic. In the buildup to the final, a representative from the club went to meet with Gypsies in an attempt to lift the curse. During the match, with the score tied at 1–1, the ball burst. It has since been seen by fans of the club as the moment the curse was lifted. Derby County went on to win the match 4–1.

England Penalty Curse

Prior to the 2018 FIFA World Cup England hadn't won a game on a penalty shootout since 1996. The curse was broken with a penalty victory against Colombia in the 2018 World Cup round-of-16. Subsequently, England lost the UEFA Euro 2020 Final to Italy in a penalty shootout.

European World Cup champions' curse

Starting in 2002, European winners of the FIFA World Cup have frequently been eliminated in the group stages of the next World Cup. As of 2018, Germany became the third World Champion in a row to bow out at the group stages of the World Cup, and the fourth in five competitions.

*1998 winners France were eliminated at the group stages in 2002.
*2006 winners Italy were eliminated at the group stages in 2010.
*2010 winners Spain were eliminated at the group stages in 2014.
*2014 winners Germany were eliminated at the group stages in 2018.

The curse was broken in 2022 when the 2018 winners France qualified for the Round of 16 after finishing first in their group. Later they would advance to the final for a 4th time but they lost to the eventual winners Argentina in a penalty shootout.

''FIFA'' cover curse

Appearing on the cover of EA's popular ''FIFA'' video game series has sometimes been said to represent a curse, with players experiencing injury, poor form or other controversies in the year following their appearance on the cover. Of course, as with the ''Madden'' and ''Sports Illustrated'' cover jinx, a player who appears on the cover of ''FIFA'' is likely to be at the peak of his career, so there is only one way to go from there — downward. Allegedly cursed players include:
*Wayne Rooney (''FIFA 06''): fractured a metatarsal and underperformed at the 2006 FIFA World Cup, which culminated with a red card in a quarter-final loss against Portugal.
*Theo Walcott (''FIFA 10''): was not selected for the England squad at the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
*Kaká ('' FIFA 11''): was injured and only played eleven games in the 2010–11 La Liga.
* Jack Wilshere (''FIFA 12''): injured all season and did not play a single minute.
*'' FIFA 19'': Originally the cover star was Cristiano Ronaldo, who was then accused of rape, which caused him to be dropped from the cover. Replaced with Neymar, Kevin De Bruyne and Paulo Dybala; all had rather poor seasons.
*Eden Hazard (''FIFA 20''): was injured for most of the season after a €100 million move to Real Madrid, calling it "the worst season of his career."
*Kylian Mbappé (''FIFA 21''): He scored no goals in four matches at the 2020 UEFA European Championship. He then missed a penalty in a shootout against Switzerland, eliminating France in the Round of 16.

FIFA Women's World Cup hosts' quarter-finals curse

Since the first edition of the FIFA Women's World Cup in 1991, it is believed that a curse exist for every host country when they reached the quarter-finals of the FIFA Women's World Cup, with five out of six hosts failed in the last eight, except for the United States (which hosted the 1999 and 2003 editions and also the most successful one). This pattern began with China losing to Sweden in 1991, before losing again in the same stage to Norway in 2007. Sweden, as hosts of the 1995 tournament, lost to China after penalties. Germany, meanwhile, suffered the most shocking quarter-finals elimination by far, losing to Japan after extra times despite being the defending champions and hosts of the 2011 edition. Canada, hosts of the 2015 edition, fell to England in the same stage. Most recently, France, hosts of the 2019 edition, were eliminated by the United States in the last eight.

Hibernian F.C.

Scottish football side Hibernian endured a 114-year wait to win their third Scottish Cup