Cristiano Ronaldo, England and Everton have been the subject of football’s greatest pitch invaders

The woke police and Cristiano Ronaldo will say pitch invasion is not something which should be celebrated in football, but it has spawned some great moments.

They always feel like a welcome light relief and we love to see them running on and falling over. This week we celebrate 10 pitch invaders.

Tottenham v West Ham

A classic of the genre. Tottenham are preparing to take a free-kick just outside the penalty area and our pitch invader emerges from the crowd in the far right corner, unsuccessfully pursued by two stewards. Our man heads straight for the ball, awaiting the free-kick and hits it towards the top corner but has it saved and continues his run into the crowd, stewards in hot pursuit. To be fair, I’ve seen worse free-kicks by players claiming to be professionals.

Barnsley v Manchester United

United are two up and they’re playing injury time when their goalkeeper is about to take a goal kick from the six-yard box before he’s ambushed by a pair of pitch invaders, working together as a lethal strike partnership. One runs on and immediately falls over, gets up and makes a short cross to his partner who sidefoots it home with aplomb. They run away celebrating, one pursued in what could hardly be called an athletic fashion by a portly steward. To be fair, United signed them for £60million and they were more effective than Joshua Zirkzee.

Luxembourg v Russia

At first, this lad is deceptively trotting around the pitch, only to be subjected to a pincer movement by two stewards attempting to suppress the man’s free spirit. But he shows remarkable speed in a short sprint and evades both, who crash into each other like a slapstick comedy and he accelerates towards the goal with another steward chasing. He dives headfirst into the goal, his exhibitionist tendency satiated. I bet it was more entertaining than the match.

Manchester United v Atalanta

In Cristiano Ronaldo‘s head people naturally worship him, so he isn’t surprised when, walking off the pitch a fan runs almost the length of the pitch to get to him. Here comes the fan, with four high-viz jackets in pursuit at varying degrees of speed, one of whom performs a superb pratfall as the fan reaches CR7 and pulls at his shirt, at which point the stewards get him and Cristiano coolly shrugs it off as any messiah  who has never scored a single legitimate goal for Portugal would.

Eastleigh v Bolton

The pitch invader is following in the great traditions, running to catch up with play, arms outstretched when he suddenly realises the play unfolding before him and senses his chance to score. Everyone keeps playing like a man in sportswear and an orange hat isn’t amongst them. The ball is cleared at the last minute, causing our man to skid to a halt and fall over, his chance to be a hero suddenly deflated.

FC Cincinnati v Orlando City

A mother is sitting watching the game with her two-year-old when said kid does that thing which toddlers tend to do, which is something unexpected and silly. He ducks under the fence effortlessly and legs it at pace onto the pitch as the play shifts away, in that unfocused way all pitch invaders have. For a wee kid, he dashes at quite a pace, uninhibited. His mam has to invade the pitch as well to rescue him in that embarrassed way familiar to all parents whose child has shown them up.

England v Ireland

As the players line up for pre-match anthems, they are joined by a tall, well-fed chap who assumes a position at the end of the line as though it’s the most natural thing and not someone having a YouTube joke, dressed in an old England kit. Antony Gordon looks askance at him but perhaps mistakes his corpulent form for a teammate. Everyone is so afraid to say or do anything, the incident passes without anyone having a laugh and telling him he’s the new Frank Lampard, before three besuited types spot the intruder and lead him off.

Everton v Newcastle

If you’re going to invade a pitch and tie yourself by the neck to a post, you have to have some balls and a good cause, such as preserving the planet as a habitable place so we don’t have to fly with Elon Musk to Mars. Which is just what a Just Stop Oil protestor did, only to be confronted by a wide-faced man and his bolt cutters which didn’t seem to work very well. He attacks the neck ties with the sort of gusto I associate with Sam Allardyce eating a battered sausage, expending much energy to achieve nothing. And still the earth burns.

Chelsea v Juventus

An unusual example of a pitch invader in the women’s game. The daft lad comes on without ceremony, not even running in the daft legs-up way of most. It looks like he wants to film himself to put on social media and holds his phone up, feeling very clever and never having otherwise been anywhere with 22 women. But Sam Kerr is made of less tolerant Aussie gristle, is contemptuous of such self-indulgence, and fearlessly shoulder charges him to the ground from where he’s dragged off, hopefully feeling silly and glad she didn’t decide to kick his head in.

Finally I’m not sure where this happened, possibly Norwich. The video is hilarious, shot from behind the goal. Our speculative pitch invader climbs over the hoarding to begin his moment of magic. Except he’s a chubby lad and a little unstable, so he falls over behind the net almost immediately, slumping at the feet of the stewards who get hold of him and lead him away. In a second he went from hero to zero.

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