The funniest football team names in the world - and the stories behind them

[THE FUGITIVE]

Telegraph Sport reveals the explanation for some of the most curious club names in the sport �" including Swiss club Young Boys

Young Boys of Bern
One of Switzerland's oldest clubs, and certainly the most amusingly named (even more than Grasshoppers Zurich). Young Boys were founded in 1897 after four university students put on a game of football against Basel Old Boys Association. Rather than Old Boys, they opted to christen themselves Young Boys - and just to compound the silliness, they duly started playing their games at the Wankdorf Stadium. Enough said.

Semen Padang
One of the top teams in Indonesia (playing in red). And what a delightful name. Named after the place they are from, Padang, and their erstwhile sponsor, who were the country’s largest cement producer. Also sounds like the worst possible sort of takeaway curry.

Deportivo Wanka
The team is based in Huancayo in the Peruvian Andes, leading to the popular fan chant “Andes where we can see them, you Wankas”. They are named in honour of the indigenous Wankas people that used to live in the area. They were in the first division until 2004. In that season, the struggling Wankas moved their home stadium to Cerro de Pasco, which is at an altitude of 4,380m (13,973ft) above sea level. In a sort of maxi version of the Luton plastic pitch, it was hoped that altitude sickness and a lack of oxygen would be a big handicap for visiting sides. Sadly, the Wankas were relegated anyway.

Botswana Meat Commission
The Southern African country is well-known for its beef exports but who cares about that, because it is also known as a world leader in comedy football team names. Botswana Meat Commission, who were also briefly a prog rock group, play their top-flight football in Lobatse and take their place in a splendid football pyramid that also features Golden Bush and Naughty Boys.
Fotballaget Fart
Based in Vang, in the North of Norway, the men’s team of Fotballaget Fart yo-yo between the country’s third and fourth division, although the women’s team is a perennial fixture in the top flight. The team’s name means “football team speed” in, well, Norwegian, obviously. In 2014, a bloke called Erling Andreassen died aged 91 and left his entire estate to Fart; it was worth around half a million quid. Not to be sniffed at.
Insurance Management Bears
Almost certainly the most exciting club in the Bahamas, the Insurance Management Bears were set up by Bahamas FA President Anton Sealey in 1996 after he got a grant from the company for whom he worked. No flies on Anton: the Bears then won the National Championship six times out of the seven it was contested. Subject of the legendary sports flick Bad News Bears and the follow-up The Value of Your Investment May Go Down As Well As Up Bears.
The Strongest
Top name, top club … and a wealth of top nicknames including Tigre, El Derribador de Campeones, Gualdinegro and El Decano. Just seems greedy: as if The Strongest wasn’t already brilliant. Anyhow, they play in La Paz, Bolivia. In Bolivia’s 1932-1935 war with Paraguay, players and staff of the club made up a division of the army and did so well that the Batalla de Cañada Strongest was named after them. This makes them the only football club in the world to have a battle named after them, apart from Atletico Battle of the Bulge.

Name game: The Strongest's Rodrigo Ramallo on the attack (ALAMY)
Hearts of Oak
They come from Ghana, they play in Accra, they are the country’s oldest still-existent club, and as if the club name was not cool enough, they’re also known as Phobia (and have an ace kit: the red one, below).

Hearts on sleeve: The Ghanaian club's defenders close down an attacker (AFP)
Dinamo Bender
Playing their football in the impossibly glamorous surrounds of the Belarus second tier, the club representing the town of Bender has had several incarnations in a bid to make their name as funny as possible. Until 1958, they were Burevestnik Bender. In 1959, they tried Lokomotiv Bender. 1960 was the start of a 13-year stretch as Nistrul Bender, and then a 13-year period as Pishevik Bender. Spells as Tighina Bender and Tighina-Apoel Bender followed before the club settled on the even more hilarious Клуб снят с чемпионата.
Kalamazoo Outrage
The founding fathers of US soccer declared in their constitution that all soccer clubs must consist of a silly place name followed by an outlandish noun, ideally abstract. Sadly, none of them seem to last very long. Among the teams that have ceased to be are Knoxville Impact, Milwaukee Rampage and Michigan Madness, but all bend the knee to Kalamazoo Outrage, whose light burned briefly but oh-so-brightly from 2007 to 2010.
Deportivo Morón
Legendary Argentinians. They may play in the third division but there is nothing third rate about their name. They play in the Buenos Aries suburb of Moron and their club emblem is a cock. Like a chicken, that is.