Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro talked U.K. football recently, and the even though the two didn’t agree on who might win, they both believe football is “the greatest sport ever.” The Grudge Match stars were in the U.K. promoting their new film, that opened in the U.S. on Christmas Day.

De Niro readily admitted to not having much experience playing the sport. Stallone actually thought he had a chance at being a decent player, but found out otherwise when starring the the film Escape to Victory, which featured some bona fide football players, including Pele, Bobby Moore and John Wark. Of course you’ve certainly figured out by now that U.K. football is actually soccer. Sylvester Stallone learned he really was pretty bad at playing.

“That was one of the low points of my life,” Stallone recalled. “What a butt-kicking I got! I still have a broken finger from trying to block a penalty by Pele. He put on a pair of World War II shoes which were steel-tipped, and the ball was like a cannonball – it was twice as thick and heavy as footballs are today. He was telling me he was going to take a shot and I thought ‘it’s soccer, what’s the big deal? It’s easy’. He came to take one penalty shot and he told me exactly where he was going to put it, so I stood there but the ball still flew past me before I could move.”

Things went downhill from there.

“He put it literally right where he had said. He did it again, and it ripped through the back of the net and broke a window in the barracks where we were filming,” Stallone added. “I went ‘are you kidding me?’ I found a new kind of respect.”

Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro were really pretty funny when discussing the sport at the BBC in England.

“I have played it, and my kids played it but not much. I am not into the sport,” De Niro said.

“So you are not ready to go pro?” Stallone asked.

“No, not unless there is a part in a movie for me,” De Niro replied.

“We could do a film called ‘Sludgematch’ about the slowest soccer players in the world,” came Stallone’s reply.

Wouldn’t you have liked to seen the expression on De Niro’s face when Stallone threw that quip at him?

These two are absolutely priceless together in person and in Grudge Match. Have you caught them together yet on the big screen?

Image via Wikimedia