Has anything like this ever happened in football before?

Deportivo San Martin will win the Peruvian championship on Sunday if they lose their final game of the regular season. But if they win the match, they could have to face Universitario in a two-leg playoff.

This odd and unfortunate situation has arisen thanks to the weird and wonderful format used for the championship.

Not unusually in Latin America, the Peruvian championship is divided into two stages, known as the Apertura (the first stage) and the Clausura (the second stage).

The winners of each stage meet in the final and, if the same team wins both stages, they win the championship automatically without the final being played. Still with us? Here comes the good bit…

This year, Universitario won the first stage and San Martin then won the second stage, wrapping it up with three games to spare (the last one is on Sunday).

The twist is that Universitario, if they fail to finish in the top seven of the second stage, lose the right to play in the final and San Martin will win the title (San Martin safely finished third in the first stage).

Universitario are currently 10th, three points behind seventh-placed Jose Galvez. They can only crawl into seventh spot if Alianza Atletico and Atletico Minero (eighth and ninth respectively) fail to win on Sunday and Jose Galvez lose their final game.

Unfortunately for Universitario, Jose Galvez’s opponents just happen to be…Deportivo San Martin.

Not surprisingly, Universitario’s players are not holding out much hope of Deportivo San Martin doing them a favour.

“I congratulate San Martin on winning the title,” said Universitario midfielder Rainer Torres this week. “They did what we failed to do.”

Of course, there have been plenty of cases in tournaments such as the World Cup where teams have lost their final group games and found themselves facing easier opposition than if they had won.

And there have been several occasions in Mexico’s spectacularly bizarre championship where teams have managed to qualify for the quarter-finals and get themselves relagated at the same time.

But San Martin’s situation has to be a first — unless anyone else knows otherwise?

PHOTO: Alianza Lima players hold aloft the trophy after their victory in the final of the Peruvian national soccer championship, at Lima’s National stadium, Jan. 31, 2004. The 2003 soccer championship was cancelled due to a players strike. Alianza Lima defeated Sporting Cristal 2-1. REUTERS