“In recent years the reigning Premier League champions have been featured on TV in the UK during the first weekend of the season, but this year Chelsea’s match with Burnley is a Saturday 3pm kick-off,” writes Mike Coxon. “When was the last time a reigning champion wasn’t on TV the first weekend of the season? For my money it would be the famous Wimbledon v Manchester United game featuring that goal from David Beckham.”
Well, it did involve a famous contribution from a United No7, but it wasn’t Beckham. The last time this occurred was in 2003-04, when Manchester United beat Bolton 4-0. The game is remembered for a dazzling debut by the teenage substitute Cristiano Ronaldo, who had signed from Sporting Lisbon a few days earlier. The live matches on Sky and Premiership Plus that weekend were newly promoted Portsmouth v Aston Villa, Leeds v Newcastle and Liverpool v Chelsea (who had just been bought by Roman Abramovich).
It was common in the early days of the Premier League, when only one match was televised on the opening weekend, for the champions to kick off at 3pm on a Saturday. It happened in 1992-93 (Leeds 2-1 Wimbledon), 1994-95 (Manchester United 2-0 QPR), 1995-96 (Blackburn 1-0 QPR) and 1996-97 (Wimbledon 0-3 Manchester United). That was the game in which one swish of Beckham’s right foot sent him hurtling towards superstardom. Imagine how big he’d be if it had been live on TV.
It’s liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive!
“What was the first live football match shown on Sky?” asks Peter Christian.
Sky are sometimes criticised for suggesting that there was no football before 1992. There was – and some of it was even live on Sky. We know that Nottingham Forest 1-0 Liverpool (“Sheringham goes for goal! Oh!”) was their first live Premier League game, yet they showed plenty of live matches and highlights before that, from Serie A to the Zenith Data Systems Cup.
The first match shown on Sky was in May 1988, a post-season midweek friendly between Manchester United and the new Italian champions Milan. It was called the ‘European Challenge Match’, played at a time when English clubs were still banned from Europe, and shown live on the pan-European service ‘Sky Channel’. Milan thrashed United 3-2 on a desperate Old Trafford pitch that still had rugby league markings from the Premiership final between Widnes and St Helens a few days earlier.
All Milan’s stars were there: Marco van Basten, Ruud Gullit, Paolo Maldini, Franco Baresi. There was also the rare sight of Claudio Borghi, the brilliant Argentinian whose time in Italy was such a disappointment, in a Milan shirt. He scored twice. “Although they only occasionally moved into top gear,” wrote David Lacey in this paper, “Milan looked a class above.” Two late United goals gave the scoreline an illusory sheen.
Rupert Murdoch then launched a four-channel service in 1989, renaming it Sky TV. The first live match on this platform was played on 30 January 1990, a Zenith Data Systems Cup Northern Final first leg. Middlesbrough won 2-1 away at Aston Villa. The match was shown on Sky One, their all-purpose channel, between Frank Bough’s World (insert your own watershed joke here) and The Hitchhiker.
British Satellite Broadcasting also showed live matches around this time, with commentary from the great Martin Tyler and Andy Gray, including England international and Scottish domestic games. In November 1990, BSB merged with Sky, and you know the rest.
The long and the short of it (II)
Last week we took a fittingly brief look at the shortest fixture ever played, in terms of the number of letters in each team name. Lyn v Odd was leading the way, but Kári Tulinius can see those six letters and lower them …
“In the Nordic countries it’s common that teams are known simply by their abbreviations,” notes Kári. “For example, in Finland you’ll find HJK, SJK and VPS in the top division and one of Sweden’s most storied clubs is AIK. Denmark has AaB and OB as well. The West Nordic countries have their share as well, Iceland having teams such as ÍA, KR, HK and FH, and the Faroe Islands have ÍF, MB, KÍ and HB.
“Twice two-letter teams from these last two countries have met in Europe. FH and HB met in the first qualifying round of the Champions League in 2007, and KR and ÍF met in the first qualifying round of the Europa League in 2011. FH-HB and KR-ÍF are the European fixtures with the fewest letters I could find. The match of fewest letters I could find involving an English team was KR-QPR in the Uefa Cup back in 1984, with QPR winning 7-0 on aggregate.”
Players with the same name in the same teams (IV)
For the last few weeks we’ve been looking at players with the same name in the same team. Just when we thought we were out, Duncan Lawson pulls us back in …
“At one point, Dundee United had two players called Alan Irvine,” writes Duncan. “To make the difference clear someone had the idea to use their initials, but this didn’t really help because one was Alan J Irvine and the other was J Alan Irvine so it was still very hard to tell where the J fell for each particular player. Being a pragmatic lot, the fans just used Big Alan and Little Alan but, unhelpfully, further confusion was caused by Little Alan being a wide midfield player and big Alan being converted from a centre forward to (you’ve guessed it) playing out wide. Perhaps even more pragmatic was the manager (Jim McLean) who didn’t pick either very often, and rarely if at all together.”
Knowledge archive
“The two 5-0 scorelines in the Premier League opening day fixtures got me thinking,” wrote Ollie Regan in 2012. “What’s the highest scoring opening weekend in history?”
The 27 goals scored that weekend was actually a distinctly mediocre return in comparison to most opening weekends, despite Fulham and Swansea’s best efforts. It barely made a challenge to rival the Premier League’s 36-goal record, set in the 2003-04 season, and was dwarfed by the 1926-27 English top flight’s record of 52 goals, which had an average of 4.72 goals per game.
But that in turn is nothing compared to the achievements elsewhere in Europe. Belgium has been the place to be for opening-day goal gluts. In 1999-2000 40 goals were scored in nine matches (helped considerably by Westerlo and Genk’s 6-6 draw) and two years later the Jupiler League clocked up another 39 on opening day (this time admittedly helped by Mouscron being awarded a 5-0 win at Aalst due to an ineligible player).
Spain’s top-flight managed to average 5.375 goals-per-game on the opening weekend of the 1950-51 season – the eight fixtures included an 8-2, a 6-2, a 5-0, a 3-3, a 3-2, a 4-0 and a 3-1 with only Real Valladolid and Deportivo letting the side down with a disappointing 1-0. There must have been something in the water in Europe that weekend – Serie A also registered an exceptionally productive opening day with 4.5 goals per game. Compare that to 1979-80, when the eight matches mustered only six goals between them.
So La Liga’s golden opening to the 1950-51 season is the best we can manage. One of the greatest hauls of goals came in Argentina in the first fixtures of the 1927 season. Fifty goals were scored on the opening day, although that’s not quite so impressive when you discover that the league was a bumper version consisting of 34 teams. Which leads us on to another question – the following season, thanks to its strange relegation rules, Argentina featured a league of 36 teams.
Can you help?
“Are there any major rivalries where there has never been a player that played for both teams sometime in their career?” wonders Ben Janeson.
“‘London’ appears to be poorly represented in terms of appearing in team names,” reckons Jon Pople. “Who is the highest ranked football team with ‘London’ in their name? Also, do any other capital cities suffer with this in the same way?”
.@TheKnowledge_GU Jimmy Anderson is to bowl at an end named after him, have any footballers attacked ends named after them (Not friendlies)
— Just Lambert (@Lambertnffc) August 5, 2017
What's the most number of clubs in one competition with the same sponsor? Emirates had 3 in CL last season, could be 4 next season w/ Milan
— Jack Tanner (@mrjacktanner) August 8, 2017
“Wayne Rooney finished last season winning the Europa League with Manchester United but finds himself this season starting the same competition in the third qualifying round with Everton. Has any other player gone from winning a competition (continental or domestic) to an even earlier starting round than this the following season?” asks Rob Fearnley.
- Send questions and answers to knowledge@theguardian.com or tweet @TheKnowledge_GU
