“After listening to Arsenal fans moaning after their 3-0 defeat to Chelsea, I wondered: has a manager ever been sacked because of poor pre-season results?” wonders Paul Cartwright.
We have previously looked at managers who were sacked during the summer break, though not specifically at those who lost their job because of pre-season results. So here’s Oliver Robinson, waiting to tell us a story. “I’ll take you down to Hampshire,” says Oliver, “where, in 2015, Bashley sacked their manager – the ex-Chelsea, Millwall and Dallas Sidekicks defender David Stride – after five and a half weeks. The Bash said that it was because of ‘a run of poor pre-season results and lack of player signings’ although the run wasn’t that bad: four games, no goals, eight conceded.”
There was a variation on this theme during the USSR’s preparation for the 1986 World Cup. “The manager Eduard Malofeyev was sacked a month before the start of the competition, specifically due to ‘poor results in friendlies’,” says Marat Airapetian. “The replacement was the great Valery Lobanovskyi, which was only natural, considering that out of 22 players in the squad, 12 represented his club, Dynamo Kyiv.”
In that case, the end justified the means. The USSR were one of the teams of the tournament, even though they went out in the last 16. They thrashed Hungary 6-0, and scored umpteen long-range heatseekers before losing 4-3 to Belgium in a thriller.
Finally, it’s our old friend Jørn Andersen, who was included in the previous link about managers who were sacked during the summer. It seems there were a few reasons he got the boot, one of them being that old devil called results.
“If we define pre-season as including pre-league season, then he definitely qualifies,” says Julian Unkel. “He took over Mainz 05 from Jürgen Klopp before the 2008-09 season and achieved promotion to the Bundesliga. However, during pre-season, differences arose between Andersen and the club about his methods (for example, he would not allow his players to hang family pictures in the dressing-room). After several underwhelming pre-season results, Mainz were also eliminated in the first round of the German Cup by fourth-division team VfB Lübeck. Andersen was sacked on 3 August 2009, four days before the first league game, and replaced by Thomas Tuchel.”
And, of course, there’s now this.
The early early bath (II)
Last week we recalled some of the fastest red cards in football history. Dave Newsome has a gem of a tale to add to the list.
“When I read the Knowledge I was reminded of Maurice Setters (assistant manager to Jack Charlton with the Republic of Ireland), who used to tell a story from his playing days as a hard man. Told to ‘do’ the winger he would be marking, he made a chest-high tackle on said winger before the ball had reached the wing from the kick off. As this happened more or less on the halfway line and there was no possibility of arguing with the ref’s decision, he just picked himself up, stepped over the battered winger and trotted off down the tunnel.
“It’s possibly not quick enough to beat the record for a red card but the actual offence must have been quicker. Setters played for Manchester United but I cannot believe he did this for them, so perhaps it was West Brom, Stoke or Coventry? If anyone knows where and when this happened I would be very grateful. The story was told by Setters to my uncle who passed away a few years ago.”
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Can anyone fill in the details? If so, email knowledge@theguardian.com or tweet @TheKnowledge_GU
Players with the same name in the same team (III)
We’ve already had enough players with the same name in the same team to fill an XI (or rather two XIs) … but there are a few more.
“My club, St Mirren, signed two players called Ross Stewart this summer, and both players were playing with Albion Rovers until we signed them,” writes Dave Claes. “Thankfully one is a goalkeeper and the other is a striker, making it a little bit easier to tell them apart.”
“Dagenham & Redbridge had two Daniel Greens in their squad for their 2010-11 League One campaign,” notes Nick Tolerton. They were separated as ‘Danny Green’ and ‘Danny J Green’, the former starting most matches that season but the latter making only a few appearances as a sub. They were both on the field in a couple of matches at the end of the season.”
“In Hungary it’s fairly common to have two players with the same name in a squad,” points out Peter Gubert. “It’s not something that happens every year, but nor is it a sensation when does. In the 1970s, my club Videoton had two players called János Nagy for almost a decade.
“The strange thing is that when they became team members, we already had a János Nagy who did not play a single game for the seniors, so they were called Nagy II János and Nagy III János all their career. We then signed a fourth János Nagy in 1980; he was called Nagy IV János (Nagy I and Nagy II were not on the roster that time) but failed to play a single league or cup game. You can see the squad lists here.”
The short and the short of it
@TheKnowledge_GU I'll keep it brief but is tonight's Nice v Ajax the shortest fixture in terms of letters (8) of the two teams concerned?
— dan almond (@pompeyrabbi) July 26, 2017
The, erm, short answer is no. Lyn have met Odd a number of times in Norway. It’s true that Odd are known by various names, including Odd Grenland from 1994 to 2012, but we’re not going near that Pandora’s box.
Knowledge archive
“After reading about Newcastle’s brawl with Huddersfield during a friendly last week, I was wondering how many other teams had been involved in dust-ups during meaningless exhibitions,” wrote Jermaine Henry in 2009.
A fair few, would be the short answer, and we have already covered testimonials gone bad in the Knowledge before, but a few stand-out examples do spring to mind and none more so than QPR’s fracas with China’s Olympic team in 2007. China had been holding a two-week training camp in England, but seven players had to be sent home after a brawl that involved almost every player on the pitch plus a number of coaches and bystanders.
“I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,” one witness told the Ealing Gazette at the time. “There were punches, kung-fu kicks and all sorts. It was absolute mayhem.” China’s Zheng Tao was knocked out and suffered a fractured jaw in the melee, and QPR were later fined £20,000, with assistant manager Richard Hill suspended for three months.
But while that set-to took place on a muddy training field, Thailand and Qatar held their own epic brawl live on national TV back in 1998. Qatar’s players had reacted badly to a decision by referee Ekchai Thanatdeunkhao early in the second half, disputing it for more than five minutes before one Thai player came over to complain about the delay. He got shoved in the chest, and then all hell broke loose. The game was eventually abandoned, after a series of running battles involving both sets of players and even one or two journalists, who reportedly began “throwing debris from the sidelines”.
Falkirk’s pre-season encounter with Turkish side Rizespor in 2006 ended similarly abruptly after a series of skirmishes on and off the pitch. Relations between the sides got off to a bad start after Rizespor showed up at 5.37pm for a match that was scheduled to kick off at 3pm, and the officials then walked off the field after 22 minutes when a scuffle broke out in the Falkirk area. They were persuaded to return and Rizespor scored soon afterwards. When Falkirk scored early in the second half, however, Rizespor’s goalkeeper Atilla Koca took exception to the celebrations of Bairns fans behind his goal and quickly became embroiled in a fight with a number of them. The match was swiftly abandoned.
Then again, not all players know how to get involved in such a dust-up. Ivica Olic and Carlos Eduardo may both have been spoiling for a scrap during a friendly – admittedly during the Bundesliga winter break – between Hamburg and Hoffenheim in February, but frankly the game of overhand slapsies that ensued may help explain why footballers don’t do this more often.
Can you help?
“After Darron Gibson’s outburst, are there other players who have done a Gerald Ratner on their own team?” wonders Nathan Howe.
“Germany’s last player of the year, Philipp Lahm (33), is three years older than the manager of the year, Julian Nagelsmann (30),” points out Julian Unkel. “I reckon that’s the first time this has happened, but your readers may prove me wrong.”
“What was the first live football match shown on Sky/BSkyB?” asks Peter Christian.
“Everybody talks about Total Football, but what formation did Holland’s 1974 team actually play?” wonders Lisa Webb.
- Send questions and answers to knowledge@theguardian.com or tweet @TheKnowledge_GU
