Stereotype Accuracy

Two weird recent pieces of football news. First:

Egypt's players sacrificed a cow during a training session on Friday to bring them luck at the African Nations Cup.

A Reuters photographer at the practice session said the players surrounded the cow when it was released on to the field and pulled it to the ground before one of them killed it by stabbing it in the neck.

Team sources said the ritual was to bring them luck

If someone would have put that in a screenplay, she would have been accused of stereotyping. But the handy thing about stereotypes is that they are often rather accurate. Not always, though:

A Vatican-backed football tournament for Rome seminarians and priests which has already seen its share of red cards and rows on the pitch has been forced to crack down on rowdy supporters in the stands.

After neighbours living near the ground complained of noise, trainee priests supporting their teams in the Clericus Cup tournament have been told that they will be barred from entering the ground if they continue to show up armed with drums, megaphones, trumpets, maracas and ghetto blasters.

Loud chanting, sometimes in Latin, will also be discouraged to avoid "disturbing the peace", the organisers said.
(...)
The ban comes in the wake of tense moments on the pitch in last season's final, when players from the losing side, Pontifical Lateran University, harangued the referee, claiming an opponent had dived to win a penalty, and earned themselves spells in the special sin-bin set up for the tournament.

Clericus Cup? Chants in Latin? Sin-bin? You couldn't make it up, could you?