Buzzin Football Blog

Extreme Football

FIFA World Cup 2010 sponsors Castrol have taken the sacred game of football to new extremes with their own brand of Extreme Football, designed to take the sport into the Extreme Sports Arena.

Castrol ambassador Martin Keown and his former Arsenal team mate Nigel Winterburn were selected to put two university teams through their paces with football matches taking place on ice and sand.

Filmed against the glamorous backdrop of Basingstoke’s Planet Ice, the two teams under the weathered eyes of two Arsenal defensive stalwarts took to the ice for a bone crunching showdown that yielded eight goals. The first encounter was followed by a trip to the South West as the teams descended on a windswept and rain soaked pitch on Weston Super Mare’s beach front to once again tackle football in its most extreme.

Martin Keown said of the extreme experience:

“The week was one big experiment; we took good players and threw them into extreme situations that would push them to the limit. Both days were shot in extreme cold and the players’ bodies really suffered. They may have been cold and wet but this whole exercise really helped to bring them together as a team and show you what real football fans will put themselves through for their love of the sport.”

and Winterburn added:

“This was a hilarious week. To begin with I didn’t believe it would be possible but having seen it in practice everyone had a great laugh and the players loved the challenge. Both the ice and the sand took football into an extreme environment that I have never seen before and should be really interesting for football fans ahead of the World Cup.”

The project was shot in November over a one week period and the results are currently being shown as a four part series on Sky Sports and Sky1, between December 5th and 20th. All four episodes can be viewed online at Castrol Edge Extreme Football.