“Given that football is usually dominated by clubs form the big cities (London, Manchester, Liverpool etc) which is the most successful English/British/European club to come from a town?” asked Stuart Holmes last week.
Our first problem here is one of definition. In the UK there’s no specific criteria to make a distinction between a town and a city, while several European languages don’t even have separate words to designate any difference. Reading (population: circa 250,000) is not a city; St David’s in Pembrokeshire (population: less than 2,000) is. And if you want to get really pedantic you can argue that London, that is the Greater London conurbation, is not actually a city (it has no city charter), although it does contain two of them – the City of London and the City of Westminster.
But, in the UK at least, some areas have city status and some do not so it should be a reasonably straightforward place to start. Malcolm Warburton and Sean DeLoughrey suggest that Blackburn Rovers are the frontrunners. “Rovers must take some beating here,” writes Malcolm. “They won the Football League title in 1911-12 and 1913-14, and the Premier League in 1994-95 (the only town team to have done this), as well as the FA Cup on six occasions (1883-84, 1884-85, 1885-86, 1888-89, 1889-90 and 1927-28).”
That seems fairly cut-and-dried, although Sunderland might also have a claim. “Sunderland became a city in 1992,” writes Bryn Miils, “but the Black Cats won six top-flight titles before then.”
Further afield, Sean DeLoughrey has been working his socks off. “The most successful town club in a moderately large European country are current League of Ireland champions Dundalk, with 11 league titles and nine FAI Cups (before next month’s cup final against Cork City),” he writes. “Maltese superclubs lead the way though, with the island’s two most successful club top of the Top Town Teams Title Table: Sliema Wanderers (Malta), 26 leagues, 20 cups; Floriana (Malta), 25 leagues, 19 cups; IA (Akranes, Iceland), 18 leagues, nine cups; KI (Klaksvik, Faroes), 17 leagues, five cups; Hibernians (Paola, Malta), 11 leagues, 10 cups; Dundalk (Ireland), 11 leagues, nine cups; F91 Dudelange (Luxembourg), 11 leagues, five cups.”
In terms of success in Europe’s bigger leagues and on the continental stage, the lack of a concrete city definition means hard-and-fast answers are pretty much impossible. A couple of possible contenders: Lens have won Ligue 1, reached the Uefa Cup semi-finals and played twice in the Champions League despite a population of little over 30,000 and Szekesfehervar in Hungary is home to just over 90,000 people yet their team, Videoton, has domestic honours aplenty and reached the Uefa Cup final in 1984-85.
Who have we missed? Let us know at the usual address: knowledge@theguardian.com
EARLY ABANDONMENTS
“A referee in Italy called off an Under-14s game after 60 minutes last week because one side was getting hammered 31-0,” wrote Tom Lewis-Jones a couple of weeks ago. “Are there any other example of refs bringing an early conclusion to proceedings for unusual reasons (ie other than weather, floodlight failure, crowd trouble etc)?”
One particularly fine example comes from Germany on 8 November 1975 when Wolf-Dieter Ahlenfelder took charge of a Bundesliga game between Werder Bremen and Hannover 96. Ahlenfelder made a few strange decisions in the first-half, the strangest of which was to blow for half-time after just 29 minutes. A linesman pointed out his error, so Ahlenfelder added on 16 minutes of stoppage time.
The reason for the early halt to proceedings? Well, Herr Ahlenfelder initially denied he had been drinking but did later admit to having had several glasses of schnaps before the game. “We are men,” he added. “We don’t drink Fanta.”
GAMES THAT NO ONE BOTHERED PLAYING
A few weeks ago we recounted the strange tale of the Reggiana v Stoke fixture in the much-maligned Anglo-Italian Cup in December 1995. Or, more accurately, the non-fixture – the game was initially cancelled because of snow and the teams never bothered to rearrange the tie as neither had any chance of getting past the group stages.
So we were looking for other matches that were left unplayed because there was no point in playing them, and as ever the Knowledge readership has provided.
“Back in the dark days of the late 80s and the Heysel ban, there were no places in Europe for English teams,” writes Paul Lapper. “So when Coventry won the 1987 FA Cup I was resigned to the lack of a European adventure. However, some marketing genius decided to re-establish the Anglo-Scottish Challenge Cup as a play-off between the English and Scottish Cup winners, so European(ish) adventure was back on. I duly went to Highfield Road for the first leg in December 1987, where Coventry and St Mirren played out a drab 1-1 draw. While this should have set things up beautifully for the second leg in Paisley, in fact the match never took place and the tie is undecided to this day. This permanent postponement is usually blamed on a lack of interest from the clubs in what was, let’s face it, a pretty worthless trophy.” You can read more about the aborted Battle of Britain in this When Saturday Comes piece.
“I believe Albania v Spain in Euro 1992 qualifying was never played,” writes Steven Calliser, and he’s quite right. “Despite Spain hammering them 9-0 at home, the return match, scheduled for 18 December 1991, was cancelled as France had already secured top spot for the last eight-team European Championships. Spain finished third, behind Czechoslovakia.”
And from a bit further back: “Take your pick from any of Group One (Estonia v Lithuania not played), Group Four (Hungary v Austria twice), and Group Eight (Germany v France) from the Uefa’s 1934 World Cup qualification process,” writes Russell Connor. “As the groups were so small (usually three teams but sometimes two) this left a lot of dead rubber matches, some of which they just didn’t bother with as both teams would either already have qualified, or had no chance of qualification. In the case of Group Four, Hungary and Austria both qualified without playing each other as Bulgaria unsportingly withdrew after being hammered in each of the opening three matches of the group.”
KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVE
“I’m sure that I remember hearing about a player that was arrested after stealing something on the pitch during a match,” wrote Simon Keast in 2010. “Did it actually happen and, if so, who was the player in question?”
Your memory does not deceive you Simon, this was a genuine theft that took place in a league match between two Uruguayan sides back in 1991. The crook was a Penarol defender by the name of Goncalves and his victim was one Julio Dely Valdés, who played up front for Nacional at the time but would subsequently turn out for a number of European clubs including Cagliari, Paris Saint-Germain and Málaga, where he is now assistant manager .
Back then, though, Dely Valdés was just a flashy young so-and-so with a penchant for expensive jewellery, which he insisted on wearing during matches. On the day of the match in question he had a Mr T-esque host of gold chains hanging from his neck, along with the usual earrings attached to his lobes.
Soon enough he went up for a Nacional corner. Shirts were tugged and body parts grabbed at as players jostled for position. The delivery was cleared and Goncalves flashed a satisfied smile. Well he might – in amongst the confusion the defender had pulled one of Dely Valdés’s chains clean off his neck, before stuffing it swiftly into his sock.
Neither the striker, who still had on a significant weight of jewellery, nor anyone else in the stadium, realised what had happened but the incident had been picked up by TV cameras. Dely Valdés was accompanied by police as he confronted Goncalves outside his changing room at full-time.
Goncalves was promptly arrested, offering up a rather pathetic “I don’t know what I was thinking” by way of defence. He was freed from police custody, however, after he returned the chain.
You can read a little more about the Gold Chain Derby right here.
For thousands more sepia-tinged questions and answers take a trip through the Knowledge archive or pick up a copy of More Knowledge from the Guardian Bookshop.
Can you help?
“During Arsenal’s capitulation at the hands of Sheffield Wednesday mention was made of Lucas João’s feat of never being on the losing side whenever he scores, in similar fashion to Ian Rush’s fabled run which was of course ended by Arsenal in the same competition back in 1987,” writes Nigel Utting. “That said, has anyone ever had a sustained run of scoring without being on the winning side? I’ll be impressed if some unlucky soul has done it in five successive games but surely nobody’s notched up a streak in double figures. Or have they?”
“IK Start playing in Norway’s Premier Division is currently in a relegation battle with two tough games left,” writes John Christiansen. “Should they go down to the First Division, it will be the sixth time in 19 years they’ve been relegated from the top flight of the Norwegian league system. Is there, anywhere in the world, a team that can match this?”
“I just read this article,” writes Josh Lassman-Watts, “and one part stood out: ‘Tommy Walker from Hearts, who had scored 279 times in 253 matches for the Edinburgh side.’ So here’s my question: can anyone better than goals/games ratio for a single club over so many matches?”
“In tonight’s Championship table, Fulham are 10th, Brentford 11th and QPR 12th (a pleasing sight for a Fulham fan),” writes Jon Taylor. “But obviously it’s early in the season – have any three clubs so geographically close to each other ever ended up in consecutive places at the end of the season?”
“St Patrick’s Athletic just won the 2015 League of Ireland Cup without beating a league team,” writes Sean DeLoughrey “They received a bye in the first round, beat non-league Crumlin United 4-1 in the second round (yes, the League of Ireland Cup includes a small number of invited non-league teams), then beat Cork City, Shamrock Rovers and Galway, each on penalties. Winning a League Cup without beating a league team must be a first?”
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