In a press release issued on Wednesday, the organisers of Norway Cup, an international football tournament for boys aged 10-19, said that Russia’s SPK Cosmos team would be fined 2,000 Norwegian kroner ($240) and would be banned from the tournament. 

 

Trond Lervik, the coach for Norway's Herd team, told Dagbladet newspaper that the Cosmos team had launched an attack after one of their players, who had been earlier sent off with red card for a violent tackle, ran back onto the pitch and karate-kicked one of the Norwegian boys. 

 

The other Russian boys then began beating up their Norwegian rivals, continuing even after the panicking referee blew the whistle to call off the match. 

 

“They stormed towards our players and beat them up. It was a real fight. We way rushing in to get them out of the way,” Lervik said. 

 

The police were called but by the time they arrived the Russian team had already left. 

 

Rune Hekkelstrand from the Oslo police confirmed that the Russian team appeared to have been “very aggressive”. 

 

“Several of the boys had black eyes, and one had a possible broken rib, but this has not been confirmed by paramedics,” he said. 

 

Lervik said that from the very start the Russian boys, who were unusually large and well-built, had performed tackles which “resembled assaults”. 

 

“We knew from other teams that had met them that they played very tough, but we never thought it would go this far. We are shocked by what has happened,” he told Norway’s Sunnmørsposten newspaper. 

 

Norway Cup’s independent judges ruled that Herd had won the game 3:0.