4 OF THE STRANGEST OFFICIAL SUPER LEAGUE RULES

Maci Gian

Rules, rules, rules, the Super League is full of rules! Rules the Disciplinary Board has to follow, rules the players have to follow, and rules the coaches have to follow! While there’s a lot to keep track of, most of them are necessary to keep the games running smoothly, prevent potential sabotages, and help us spot when someone is breaking them!

Most of them.

However, there are some bizarre rules out there that were made for very specific reasons. So specific, in fact, that they’re hardly broken or mentioned by any Super League figures, so many people don’t know about them. Today, we’ll be sharing the strangest, official rules in the Super League YOU might not know about!

4. URA GIRI’S PROTECTED TEA

Ura Giri has been coaching Nakama for a long, long time. He trains his players from sunrise to sunset, he keeps a keen eye on them day in and day out to make sure none of them are falling behind, and as soon as they sleep, he spends the rest of his evening strategizing and conducting new plans. With such a strenuous schedule, one has to wonder how Ura Giri manages to stay awake and alert! Well, it’s thanks to the tea he drinks!

Not much is known about this tea except for the fact it’s leaves are getting increasingly harder to find, which has lead to rumors such as the plants possibly dying out, or that Ura Giri is intentionally making it harder. What is known, however, is the fact he refuses to tell anyone what it is, how he prepares it, or even how it tastes. Not even the color of the tea is known, as any pictures of Ura Giri drinking it tends to be very blurry, and the tea itself seems to be mixed with cream. The other thing that’s known, besides it’s rarity, is that it apparently smells like ‘Sweet, freshly baked bread’ according to the team’s goalkeeper, Kendo, who supposedly caught a whiff of it once.

Nakama’s coach has managed to hide nearly every bit of information about this tea, stating he was concerned the other ’unruly’ coaches would take something ’dear’ to him and use it to their advantage. It seemed those reasons resonated with the Disciplinary Board, as they’ve agreed to protect it and ensure it only lands in his hands.

Nakama fans have speculated what this tea could be, and have even created a whole sub-community dedicated to collecting any and every tea leaf, steeping it, and figuring out the tea-to-cream ratio to see if they can accurately recreate it. However, with no other references besides Kendo’s, this tea might forever be a mystery.

3. DON ALDO’S SHOES ARE MADE FOR PLAYING AND DANCING… AND YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE THEM.

Don Aldo’s famously known for his smooth ‘Samba Style’, a fantastical combination of dancing and playing. He makes the transition between dance moves to soccer moves so seamless, his opponents can’t help but be awestruck by each stylish step he takes. Don Aldo fell so in love with mixing his two favorite activities together that he wanted to have a unique pair of shoes that’d be good not just on the field, but off it too.

The Disciplinary Board was fine with this idea, so long as they monitored every step of the shoes’ creation process to ensure they wouldn’t give Don Aldo any unfair advantage. Apparently these shoes went through several trials and reconstructions before becoming the set the Samba King has on today.

This type of shoe is for Don Aldo and Don Aldo only. If something were to ever happen to them, the Disciplinary Board is the only one with the knowledge on how to repair and recreate them. There’s supposedly an engraving of his initials on the under side of them, making them even more unique!

2. YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO CLIMB, NOR SLIDE OFF OF, THE SOCCERSPHERE’S ARCHES.

The Soccersphere is a huge stadium, and with it’s unusual shape, it needs arched support beams to ensure it remains in place. With such a grand size, and with it’s surface being completely smooth, one would assume it wouldn’t be worth the hassle to try and climb it, but you’d be wrong.

There had been multiple instances of fans attempting to climb the support beams with no other reason besides ‘It looked fun’, and while most of them weren’t able to get several feet off the ground without sliding off, there was one individual who had managed to get to the very top of an arch. They were instructed by Orion’s security to stay put as they’d call for help from the SLDB, but they’d get fined as soon as they were on the ground. Not wanting to pay this fine—and with the arch’s shape—the person believed they’d be alright if they simply slid off, not knowing that the fall was much steeper than they anticipated. This resulted in them receiving multiple injuries.

When this new rule was officially added, Coach Black had this to say: “I cannot believe we actually had to make this into a rule. Was it wrong of me to believe fans knew better? That person was in their 30s.”

1. NINJA CREATED HIS OWN COLOR, AND YOU CAN’T USE IT.

Ninja’s white headband is iconic, it’s striking, it’s the show stopping feature about him, but did you know that there’s actually a name for the type of white it is?

‘Stellar Star White.’

Ninja and his coach worked hard for weeks—some saying months—to create the perfect mixture of dyes to get the exact shade of white he felt was most ’deserving’ to be worn around his head. His reason?

“There ain’t no player like me, and there’s no way I ever want to be like any other player, so I got Mr. Watkins to help me make something that’s truly, 100% my own!” Ninja said when he announced his new color to the world, “El Matador can have his stupid glasses, his one-and-done show, but I got something much better.”

Ninja claimed it was ’A more radiant version of white’, that it was ‘far more luminous’, and that it shined ‘much more’ at night when the stadium lights hit it. While his headband does have a fantastic shine—especially during evening games—critics of Cosmos can’t help but speculate how legitimate his claims are. Some believe it’s all fabricated to get more attention, while others believe this is another scheme to help him and his coach get even richer.

Since he’s announced this new color, Ninja’s gone out of his way to ensure that anything with his face on it used Stellar Star White for ‘absolute accuracy’ when portraying him. From billboards, to posters, to action figures and plushies, brands and marketing teams have to buy the rights to use this color if they want to have Ninja promote them. Using the color on anyone else, even another Cosmos player, could get them into legal trouble. Ninja also makes sure that any merchandise replicating his headband are not the same shade of white as his, because that would: ‘Go against the entire reason I made this color in the first place.’

Who knew one color could cause so much of a hassle!