11 of the Best, Most Chilling, Spooktacular Costumes Worn by Footballers This Halloween

Footballers from around the world took the night off on Thursday to celebrate Halloween, and many chose to do so in the most extravagant way possible.

The players were clearly feeling the spirit of Halloween, with ghosts, monsters, vampires and zombies all out to join in with the festivities. However, when it comes to the players' preferred costumes, there was one clear winner: clowns. There were clowns everywhere. Seriously, everywhere.

​Mesut Özil went for the subtle clown look ("So you mean he came as himself?" we hear you cry), both ​Marco Reus and Robert Lewandowski tried their hand at becoming The Joker, while Iker Casillas opted for the traditional murderous clown look.

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​​However, the winner of the clown competition has to go to...somebody in the ​Juventus camp.

​Cristiano Ronaldo posted a video of somebody wandering around the club complex in a really bizarre clown costume, but it's never actually revealed who is under the mask. It might have been a player, or maybe the group met a real, mysterious clown. Oooooooooo.

​​Don't worry, if clowns aren't your thing, there was plenty of other fantastic costumes on show on Thursday evening.

For example, Raúl Jiménez as a werewolf...

Adrián as a vampire...

Alphonse Areola as the cast of Alice in Wonderland...

Or Kingsley Coman as a bloodthirsty doctor...

As you can see, most players put a whole lot of effort into their costumes, with their makeup budgets clearly going through the roof.

Then you get ​Mohamed Salah...

Clearly ​Liverpool teammate ​Dejan Lovren wasn't impressed, commenting "your hair looks scarier than these creatures" on the post. Have some of that.

Finally, a quick shout-out to Mexican side Tigres, who prepared for their match against Toluca by posing for a quick pre-game photo wearing some incredible masks.

They actually won the game 1-0, so maybe they should bring the masks out as a normal pre-match routine.

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