The fart heard ’round the world is an underdog story.
It’s the tale of a humble fart, unloosed on the world in a moment of innocence in the anonymity of a game between Swedish soccer clubs nobody had ever heard of. Its maker is Adam Lindin Ljungkvist, a left back for Järna SK’s reserve team. They were playing Pershagen SK. He already had a yellow card.
He also had “a bad stomach,” per the Guardian. So, as he told Länstidningen Södertälje, which we’re going to guess is either a newspaper or a cheap, self-assembled coffee table, “I simply let go.”
There this whole besotted odyssey would have ended. But this little fart was destined for greater things. For global fame. Perhaps fortune. Maybe even a straight-to-TV movie on Lifetime and a spot on Oprah’s bench. Because the referee, Dany Kako, who cares not for your farts, showed Ljungkvist a yellow card.
Which is to say that he almost certainly became the first player in a century and a half of organized soccer to be sent off for cutting the cheese on the field. He and his fart are forever famous. Thanks to that red card.
“Yes, I was shocked,” Ljungkvist told the paper/coffee table. “It’s the strangest thing I have ever experienced in football.”
An opponent agreed. Kristoffer Linde testified that he “was standing a good distance away but I heard the fart loud and clear. It’s the strangest thing I’ve seen on a pitch, and I’ve been playing football since I was eight years old.”
Ljungkvist, baffled, needed closure. “I asked the referee, ‘What, am I not allowed to break wind a little?’ ” Ljungkvist continued, sensing that the world and the history books would need more information. ” ‘No,’ he replied. … I don’t get it but maybe he thought I farted in my hand and threw the fart at him. But I did not.”
The referee explained himself. “I perceived it as deliberate provocation,” Kako said, adding that he’d once given a player a yellow for peeing by the field as well. “He did it on purpose and it was inappropriate. Therefore, he received a yellow card.”
Ljungkvist then re-litigated the matter to Aftonbladet, which definitely is a newspaper. “To provoke anyone with a fart is not particularly smart or normal,” he said. “It’s nonsense – I just broke wind and got a red card. I spoke to the referee afterwards, I was annoyed, but there were no bad words. I just said he was a buffoon.”
