Women's World Cup: English Fan Completes Beer Odyssey Just in Time for 2019 Kickoff

We're all treating the Women's World Cup the same way we treated the men's, right? Yes? Good. That's the same spirit that Cheltenham Town fan Gus Hully, who has gone a long way out of his way to acquire a beer from every single country competing in the World Cup...for the second summer in a row. 

The rules (self-written and self-imposed, obviously) are simple. The beer has to be brewed in the country the team is from. Done. 

The drinking will have to wait at least a week though – as Hully explains, the beer only gets opened once the respective team is out of the tournament.

"I said I wasn't going to do it again after the time, effort and money that went into doing it last year," he told 90min, "but when I saw all 24 countries that had qualified, it didn't look too daunting a task considering there were no 'dry' countries so I thought might as well do it again. Celebrate another festival of football!"

"The hardest one to get was definitely Cameroon. I did a quick Google for Cameroonian beer and 33 Export seemed to be the most popular; but I could only find Nigerian beers in a load of African grocery shops in London – but I visiting my girlfriend over in Amsterdam and decided to have look on the find a beer function on untappd.

"There was nothing local, but there was an African grocery shop in The Hague which had it in stock. I was leaving that day, but Kimberley brought one over for me the next time she came to London. Chile was supposed to be difficult but Las Iguanas had various bottles of Rothhammer (a craft brewery in Santiago) on their menu, so...result!"

Obviously the objective was never to buy bad beers, but sometimes you have to take what you can get. Not so in the case of New Zealand...: "I'm most looking forward to drinking the bottle of Mac's Gold – Kimberley's family are all Kiwis, and I've heard lots of good things!"

Pool/GettyImages

But why? Why go to the effort of finding all these beers for what is, basically, a one-man competition? 

"It started a while back when I saw some guy do something similar for (I think) the 2010 World Cup on a music forum called Punktastic. He didn't get the full 32, so I thought I might be able to do better next time round! I got 23 out of 32 in 2014, then managed to get the full 24 for Euro 2016 and the full 32 last summer. I should probably give up now but it seems I just can't give it up!"