On the very same day on which the Italian National soccer player Antonio Cassano made a fool of himself in front of the international media by not-really-recanting his recent statements against gay fellow players – and actually adding more homophobic insults – the Swedish newspaper Sport Expressen raised a storm by revealing the BDSM-like pastimes of the North-European players.

A leaked video showed the ritual of gris (lit. ‘pig’) used by Swedish soccer players to humiliate and punish those who don’t reach satisfactory performances during training. The culprits are forced to drop his shorts and underwear and wait – sometimes even on all fours – for the rest of the team to violently hit his nude bottom with balls kicked from about 15 meters. Considering how powerful these pro players are, this discipline reminds of the training excesses depicted in old anime and has a BDSM undertone so blatant it can’t be ignored. What is worse is that, according to the results, the Swedish team isn’t even that good at all. Maybe, if they sublimated their deviant libido a little less…