Boy who plays soccer is banned from mixed league after ‘giving birth’ to ball on pitch, making phone call during game and many other bizarre stunts
- Brian Garruto received a two-month ban from his league for strange behavior
- These include “making a phone call while playing” and “wearing a cowboy hat”
- Garruto also pretended to shoot a bow and arrow at the opposing team and ran into the goal with the ball hidden in his shirt.
A Cleveland, Ohio teenager has been kicked out of his co-ed soccer league after months of bizarre stunts, including wearing a cowboy hat during a game and ‘birthing’ a soccer ball. football on the field.
High schooler Brian Garruto tweeted an email from the North Side Co-Ed Soccer League in which they banned him for two months for 15 infractions, ranging from the relatively minor (repeated refusal to wear shin guards) to the vanguard ‘pretending to shoot a bow and arrow at rival team after scoring’, GQ wrote on Friday.
The teenager, a senior at Westlake High School in Cleveland, racked up the offenses over a two-month period, beginning Dec. 6, when he made a phone call while playing a game .
Bizarre: Brian Garruto’s bizarre offenses included making phone calls in-game, wearing a cowboy hat on the pitch and trying to get the ball into the goal by hiding it under his shirt. Above: Brian (unmuzzled) with his teammates
Garruto’s trolling behavior continued over the following weeks; on December 13, he apparently tried a new way to score when he hit the goal while “hiding” the ball in his shirt.
On December 17, he went too far the other way when he took his shirt off completely after scoring a goal.
In that same match, he joined the opposing team on their bench and wore a cowboy hat during play.
On Jan. 3, he seemed to get a little over-enthusiastic as he scored 14 goals in one game – 11 more than players are allowed to score in North Side Co-Ed games, it seems.
But even being sent off the pitch for a red card couldn’t dampen his fire that day: he simply swapped shirts with another player who hadn’t been sent off and returned to the pitch.
Banned: The email, which was tweeted by Garruto from his now-defunct Twitter account, lists 15 offenses over two months, ranging from the most benign to the most forward-thinking.
In his last game before the ban ended, he was censured for wearing a “natural light tank top” as his football uniform, eating a banana on the pitch and tampering with the scoreboard.
And then, of course, the piece de resistance: a complaint about him “giving birth to a soccer ball after scoring”.
Garruto deleted his Twitter account after posting the email, but seems proud of his footballing prowess: a number of public images on his personal Facebook page include photos of him in football uniform, including one of him in as a little boy and another of him seemingly kicked off the pitch with a warning.
