Norwich City Thump Italian Minnows 13-0 In Pre-Season Friendly Only For Opponents To Deny Playing Against Them

Chris Wright

25th, July 2014

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By Chris Wright

Norwich City’s pre-season tour of Italy is fast becoming farcical, with the travelling hordes of Canaries fans seeing their club’s first friendly fixture on Sunday evening cancelled and replaced by an ultimately underwhelming “open training session”.

Less than 24 hours later, Novara then also pulled out of a friendly scheduled for Wednesday night, with Norwich left scrabbling around for new opponents.

Thankfully, SC Vallée d’Aoste stepped in, with Norwich going on to win 13-0 against their Serie D opposition as per the match report on the Premier League side’s official website.

However, it later emerged that it wasn’t SC Vallée d’Aoste who stepped in at all, with the Italian club subsequently issuing a statement to flat out deny their participation in the game:

“The [club] denies the news, reported on some sites and football news, (of us) having played a friendly match against Norwich (at their) training camp in Saint-Vincent, Sunday, July 20th.”

Instead, it came to light that Norwich had indeed succeeded in trouncing a loose ensemble of local amateur players, with the Canaries duly altering their match report a victory, not over SC Vallée d’Aoste as previously stated, but over an “Aosta regional select side” – which, all of a sudden, doesn’t seem quite as impressive.

As for the rest of their tour, Norwich are now set to play SC Bastia, OGC Nice and Celta Vigo in Italy, though don’t be surprised if that those games actually turn out to be against The Dog & Duck, Renford Rejects and a local U10’s blind football team.

(Via Babb Report)