“How many professional players bear tattoos with the name of their favourite club but ply their trade elsewhere?” wondered Roger Sleigh last week.
It’s surprisingly common to find ink in homage to one club on a player wearing the shirt of another.
“Leicester City’s Polish defender Marcin Wasilewski has a tattoo of Anderlecht’s badge on his right leg. He spent six years playing for them and was so popular that on two occasions a group of Anderlecht fans came over to watch him play for his new team in the 2013-14 season,” writes Liam Derry. “Incidentally it’s the same leg he broke after a shocking tackle by Standard Liège’s Axel Witsel in 2009.”
“Watford’s (and previously Walsall’s) Troy Deeney is well known as a Birmingham City supporter, and has a tattoo on one of his calves – a quick Google search fails to produce any pictorial evidence but there are lots of references to it,” sleuths Andy Myall.
“Daniel Agger!” cheers Luke Thickins. “He, in the face of interest from Barcelona, I think, had YNWA tattooed on his knuckles. And after a couple of injury plagued seasons – he had a great first year under Brendan Rodgers – but then in 2013-14, as Liverpool almost won the league by winning every game 5-4, or something similar, Agger was bizarrely rarely picked, despite being named vice-captain. At the end of that season, he rejoined his hometown club, Brondby, on a cut price deal for a huge pay cut. I miss him. Mamadou Sakho and Martin Skrtel miss him.” Did Agger tattoo himself? He’s qualified to do so.
“The Franz Beckenbauer of the 21st century, Markus Babbel, sports tattoos of names and/or badges of Hertha BSC, VfB Stuttgart, Liverpool, Bayern Munich and TSV Gilching-Argeslried,” offers Steve James. “He was going to have the badge of TSG Hoffenheim done in 2012, but they sacked him too quickly. He’s currently at FC Luzern.
“And should anybody ever ask VfB Stuttgart’s Kevin Großkreutz to show them his medals, all he’ll have to do is take his shirt off - he’s got the Bundesliga shield and the DFB Cup on his shoulder, both of which he won with his hometown club Dortmund in 2012. Alongside them is another trophy he won with a team he used to play for: the 2014 World Cup. Oh, and he’s got the Dortmund skyline tattooed on his right leg but that probably doesn’t count.”
And finally: “On the subject of players with tattoos of other teams I believe Ipswich Town centre-forward/centre-back of the 90s Richard Naylor had a Leeds United tattoo while playing for Ipswich. He later made the move back to his boyhood club having previously left their youth academy for Suffolk,” writes Jack De’Ath, wrapping up this ink-heavy section.
?EMAN A NI S’TAHW
“Following the revelation that a man and his wife named their child ‘Lanesra’, this being Arsenal backwards, what club names are there which, if reversed, would spell names more conventionally given to newborns?” ponders Justin Horton.
Pete Tomlin hasn’t just gone the extra mile on this one; he’s gone the full Proclaimers. “Due to a huge amount of boredom I decided to do a bit of investigation,” writes Pete. “From various sources I have managed to find the following rather unlikely results: York: There is an American footballer named ‘Kroy Biermann’ who currently plays for Atlanta Falcons. Wolves: According to www.meaninglike.com, the name ‘Sevlow’ is a legitimate first name! Fulham: The name ‘Mahluf’ is a not uncommon surname in some countries but I have managed to find at least one individual who had this as his first name. His details appear in a family tree on www.geni.com.
“Yeovil: Astonishingly a quick Google search turned up two people with the first name ‘Livoey’. One is Turkish but I don’t know any details about the other. (Aston) Villa: There is a person with the first name ‘Alliv’ on LinkedIn. I have also found a number of women with the name ‘Allivia’ who shorten their name to ‘Alliv’. Chelsea: According to the Kalabarian Philosophy website (no idea!), ‘Aeslehc’ really is an actual first name! Port Vale: The same website insists that both ‘Trop’ AND ‘Elav’ are legitimate first names.
“Wigan: I have managed to locate one woman with the first name ‘Nagiwa’ which is very close. Barnet: ‘Tenrab’ is a surname in some countries. I haven’t located anyone with this as their first name unfortunately. As you can see, the evidence, however unlikely, is actually there.”
Who needs Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny?
FOOTBALLER PUBS
“‘Back in the day’ every top-level footballer ran a pub when they retired – not any more,” tweeted Sam Collins. “Who was the last to do it, though?”
The last? There are plenty of footballers-turned-publicans still out there, Sam.
“I’m sure you’ve already had this one as it was mentioned in The Guardian by one of your journalists whilst interviewing the star of this story, but Jimmy Bullard still runs his pub, The One Bell, in Crayford,” writes Joe Power.
“The legendary Dominic Matteo (yes, I’m a Leeds fan) bought the Rock Bar in Leeds about six years ago, and could occasionally be seen behind said bar,” writes Matt Scott.
“Aston Villa cult hero and thunder-thighed full-back Phil King is the daddy of The Dolphin in Swindon,” notes Steve James. “Paul Cheesley, still feted in at least half of Bristol for scoring the winning goal against Arsenal a mere 40 years ago, is the landlord of The Knowle Hotel in Bristol. Stretching the definition of ‘top-level’ to dangerously generous levels, former Bristol Rovers stalwart Graham Day runs the Old Flowerpot Inn in South Gloucestershire.”
“It’s probably a stretch to call him a ‘top footballer’, but the bizarre signing of Steven Gray as one of former A-League club Melbourne Heart’s five visa spots in 2012 (see, he’s real) was only made possible by the fact that Steven had earlier emigrated to Australia from Ireland to play semi-professional football and start up a pub at the same time,” writes James Smith. “He was later signed to Melbourne Heart with the eye to providing ‘winning mentality’ as I recall, on the back of accompanying Heart’s youth team as a top up player in a round-robin tournament in Hawaii. He only played one game for Heart, but I imagine he’s probably one of the only professional footballers in the world to open a pub prior to playing their first professional football game.”
And Bobby Ingram has this: “It’s not a pub but I have bought many a frothy latté from ex-Stoke City (non-goal scoring) striker Mamady Sidibé who runs a French pâtisserie in the Potteries Shopping Centre in Hanley.”
KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVE
“After reading about John Terry’s ‘strip penalties’ training forfeits at Chelsea (as well as several other clubs’ internal motivational techniques), I wondered if there are any more random examples of club forfeits?” asked Cara Bellingham back in 2010.
For some strange, Only Fools and Horses-inspired reason, Robin Reliants feature in at least two cases. First, the Leeds United squad got their hands on a yellow three-wheeler, which would be forced upon the player voted to have performed worst in training during any given week back in 2001. Jonathan Woodgate was the initial recipient of the £1,500 motor – which the squad had funded themselves – and was forced to leave his far more plush mode of transport in the club car park for the seven-day period. “I thought it was Trotters Independent Traders turning up,” chuckled then-chairman Peter Ridsdale. According to Observer Sport Monthly, however, “the car – which was due to be signed by the squad and auctioned off at the end of the season – was smashed up by vandals. ‘It is appalling people can commit a crime like this,’ fumed manager David O’Leary.”
In 2008 Portsmouth’s players rustled up a similar plan and chipped in to buy a bright blue Reliant, which soon had one careful owner in the shape of David James. “It gives us all an added incentive to perform well in training,” claimed James. Then again, when team-mate Sean Davis was handed the keys later that year, he drove it back to the club’s Eastleigh training ground in a newly-pimped-out A-Team paint job, the theme tune blaring out of its speakers.
Managers also like to get in on the forfeit act, and it probably won’t come as much of a shock to learn that Neil Warnock and Ian Holloway are among their number. In an interview with the Independent in 2009, Warnock revealed what happened after one particular training session during a snowy February. “At the end, the winning team picked two members of the losing side,” he explained. “They had to stand on the goalline, minus certain items of clothing, while the rest of the lads had three snowballs to throw at them from 12 yards. If our strikers could hit the target in matches as well as they did with their snowballs, we’d have won promotion already.”
Rather less severe was Holloway’s 2006 method of making his underperforming Plymouth players sport a “Joey Barton bottom” – apparently a pair of shorts with a plastic backside attached to them – in tribute to Barton’s mooning of Everton fans that year. “If a player’s nominated, he’ll wear it, no problem,” said Holloway. “It was supposed to be for the worst player, but it can be awarded for anything. One time, one of them couldn’t go out because his girlfriend wouldn’t let him and he was picked. It’s been brilliant.”
Stretching the question to different sports, we even received an email from the former Hull FC rugby league player Craig Farrell, who recalled one rule from during his spell at the club. “If you played first-team rugby at any point during the season – regardless of how long you were on the pitch – and didn’t score, you had to perform a ‘nudie’ at the end of the year,” he writes. “A ‘nudie’ was one full lap around the training pitch wearing nothing but your boots and socks (on your feet). At the time I was 18 and playing for the reserves when the first team was ravaged by injury, and was duly called up to make a couple of substitute appearances in 56-4 and 54-4 defeats to the Bradford Bulls and Wigan Warriors, respectively. Needless to say, you could’ve seen me trotting around the old Boulevard in only my boots and socks a couple of months later.”
For thousands more questions and answers take a trip through the Knowledge archive
CAN YOU HELP?
“A friend of mine were recently discussing footballers whose surnames matched up with the main Scottish cities – Justin Edinburgh, Sean Dundee, etc,” writes Graeme Coleman. “Can anyone name an entire team of 11 players whose surnames match up to cities/towns within a single country?”
“I wonder if any other leagues have as long a winter break as the Swiss third division?” writes Jez Smith. “Servette’s last game was on 22 November at home to St Gallen II. Our next match is away at Cham on 5 March – 104 days later. By comparison, our last match of the 2014-15 season was on 30 May and the 2015-16 season started on 5 August – 66 days later.”
“Has a player ever played in two major tournaments thats were held in the same country?” wonders Patrick Reilly. “For example Mexico 1970 and 1986 or the World Cup in 1974 and Euro 88, which were both held in West Germany. Is there any player that played in France 98 in with a chance of playing at next year’s Euros?”
“Aston Villa lost 4-0 to Manchester City the FA Cup fourth round, which of course was the margin by which they lost last year’s final,” notes Jon Taylor. “What’s the longest run of defeats in the Cup by the same score? Or the heaviest defeat to be repeated the following year?”
“What is the greatest distance covered by a referee during a football match?” tweets Taufiq Akbari Utomo.
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