“Studiously completing my Euro 2016 sticker album, I noticed that Fleetwood defender Conor McLaughlin is in the Northern Ireland squad,” notices Daniel Jones. “Fleetwood finished near the bottom of the third tier. Has any player appearing at a major tournament ever placed lower with his club team?”
Could it be Richmond Forson? When he appeared at the 2006 World Cup for Togo, he had just helped his team win promotion from the sixth tier in France. Forson was in fact a decent player, once courted by Arsenal, who saw his career derailed by a serious car accident. Looking to get back on track, he ended up at Poiré sur Vie. This team from the west of France were crowned champions of the Ligue Atlantique in 2005-06, a full 260 places behind Ligue 1 champions Lyon. For the record, Forson impressed at the World Cup with three solid group stage games and carved out another few years in the lower professional tiers of France, before sliding back into oblivion.
Ah, but Robert Davies can go one better, with a player in the seventh tier of English football. “Ahmed Deen was in the Sierre Leone squad during the 2010 World Cup and 2010 Africa Cup of Nations whilst playing for Barnet and then transferred to Hayes & Yeading shortly after the World Cup,” writes Robert. “Karamoko Keita was a goalkeeper in the 2002 Africa Cup of Nations for Mali, whilst playing for Harrow Borough in the Ryman League.”
Unpunished players after long advantages
“I get really annoyed at referees blowing for a foul too early and forgetting to book someone long after playing an advantage,” writes Paul Mullan. “After seeing Bruno Alves getting sent off with Harry Kane breaking away during England v Portugal, what is the longest a referee has played on before giving a red card following a foul? According to Fifa ‘the atmosphere of a match’ may be considered.”
The first example that springs to mind came at Euro 96, when play continued for so long Italy’s Luigi Apolloni received a second yellow card almost a minute after a moronic lunge at Pavel Kuka. We would be more precise, but some killjoy has taken the extended highlights off YouTube.
Peter Collins has a similar example. “When Chelsea drew 0-0 at Everton in December 1998, our loveable midfielder Dennis Wise committed a second yellow card offence but, because Everton were on the attack, the referee waved play on,” he says. “Chelsea won the ball back and attacked themselves and, unless memory is playing tricks, Wisey almost got on the end of a cross to score but the ball went out for a goal-kick. At which point the referee booked him and sent him off. I’m not sure what the rules would say about someone scoring then being sent off for an offence that took place before the goal was scored …”
Finally there is this related piece of trivia from the appreciative James Straughan. “I appreciate that this doesn’t strictly answer the question, but Northern Ireland’s Euro 2016 qualifying match against Hungary saw the referee play on after Chris Baird committed a foul he deemed worthy of a yellow card. He played on long enough for Baird to commit a second yellow card offence, at which point the referee stopped the game to issue both yellow cards and therefore a red at the same time.
Big goals scored against opponents the player later managed
“Roberto Di Matteo scored the winner against Villa in the 2000 FA Cup final,” tweets Jamie Cutteridge. “Are there many bigger goals scored by someone who later managed that opponent?”
Most of the examples we have found involve Newcastle: Kevin Keegan scored twice against them for Liverpool in the 1974 FA Cup final, and Alan Shearer scored what was effectively a title-winning goal for Blackburn against them in 1994-95. Fabio Capello scored the only goal for Italy at Wembley in 1973, though it was only a friendly. Another Italian, Carlo Ancelotti, scored a trademark screamer to set AC Milan on the way to a legendary 5-0 thrashing of Real Madrid in the European Cup semi-final of 1988-89.
Knowledge archive
“Which European Championship has played host to the greatest amount of hooliganism and public disorder?” asked Iain McMillan in 2008.
Whether we use the number of arrests per tournament, the financial cost of the damage, or the total number of white plastic chairs hurled through the air, measuring public disorder isn’t a science. But that’s never stopped the Knowledge coming to arbitrary conclusions before, so here goes. There are three clear contenders for the crown of most troublesome tournament: Italy 1980, West Germany 1988 and Holland/Belgium 2000.
In 1980 the European Championship became an eight-team, two-week affair, spread across several cities. According to the BNP-supporting man the Knowledge met in the pub last week whose friends were actually there in Turin amid the tear gas and the baton charges, Italy 1980 might well be considered the most violent championship in history. Both sets of players had to leave the pitch during England’s 1-1 draw with Belgium after fighting broke out in the stands. The Italian police fought running battles with the travelling hordes and local ultras. Intense but relatively contained might be the verdict on the violence.
The same can’t be said of West Germany in 1988. The police certainly weren’t leaving anything to chance in the buildup. “We have computer information on practically every one of the 883,000 people expected for the championship,” boasted one senior officer prior to the tournament. But Dutch and German hooligans bloodily renewed old rivalries in Hamburg, while Ireland’s 1-0 win over England in Stuttgart on June 12 set the stage for a pitched battle on a railroad concourse in which the English and Irish fought side by side against 200 CS gas-wielding German skinheads. Trouble flared in every host city and by the time England were eliminated, the grand total of arrests across Germany stood at 823, of whom 381 were English.
Euro 2000 in Holland and Belgium will forever be remembered for the scenes of English rioting in Charleroi and Brussels which led to nearly 1,000 arrests. But Dr Clifford Stott, who acted as a security consultant to the Portuguese police before the 2004 tournament, thinks that the biggest influence was the police. ‘’Arrest figures reflect the tactic of mass arrest. Euro 2000 was an outcome of the approach of the Belgian police, not necessarily a surge in hooliganism,’’ Stott says.
West Germany has a definite claim for being the most tempestuous tournament, according to John Williams, senior lecturer in the sociology of sport at Leicester. ‘’It’s a rival with Euro 2000, certainly. But it’s hard to compare because policing strategies have changed so much,” he says. “They were just trying to keep the hooligans apart in Germany that year. The numbers arrested [at Euro 2000] reflects police action and local politics, particularly where governments have introduced legislation which allows them to lift people off the streets without charging them.’’
Statistics can often mislead, making comparisons between tournaments, and judgements about who’s to blame, almost impossible. ‘’It’s astounding that the World Cup of 2006 is presented as a massive success,’’ Stott argues. ‘’There were a total of 9,000 arrests in Germany. Eight hundred and twenty eight England fans were arrested or otherwise detained.’’
Numbers you can’t quite trust, subjective accounts distorted by time, and academic papers with a theoretical axe to grind all make ranking the tournaments according to measured violence a risky business. So here’s a cowardly hedging of bets, instead. The uncoveted award for ‘’Most Violent European Championship’’ goes to:
– Euro 2000 (if you go by the arrest figures)
– Euro 1988 (if you read the hair-raising eyewitness accounts)
– And Euro 1980 (if you take the word of a nostalgic fascist in a London pub)
• For thousands more questions and answers take a trip through the Knowledge archive.
Can you help?
“Given that England and Northern Ireland have same national anthem, do any other national sides share one?” tweets Dylan Mitchell. “And played each other?”
“A friend told me in 2004 that at the beginning of Euro 2004 the then USA president George W Bush asked why America is not not playing in the Euros,” claims Ammar Al-waeel. “Can anybody confirm if he did say that, and does anybody have similar foolish/funny quotes from leaders or politicians about football, including David Cameron and his support for West Ham. Or is it Aston Villa?”
“Several players have worn names or nicknames on the backs of their shirts that are only two letters long (off the top of my head, I’ve seen Jô, Demba Ba, and Ji Dong-Won do so in the Premier League, while ‘PC’ currently wears the No6 shirt for the NASL’s Ft. Lauderdale Strikers),” notes Jordan Becker. “But are there any examples of players doing one better (or one worse) by wearing names on the backs of their shirts that are only one letter?”
“Phil Parkinson recently departed Bradford City after five seasons in which each year the team finished higher in the league pyramid than the previous year,” emails Dave Hirst. “A proud achievement indeed, but I’d be surprised if this was a record. However, it got me wondering, who holds the record for the most consecutive improvements with the same club?”
“While perusing Razvan Rat’s Wikipedia page (as you do), I noticed that there was almost a 10-year gap between his first and second international goals,” notes Joe. “I can’t find the exact number of caps between his goals but it looks to be around 80 based on when he made his debut/100th appearance. My question is has any player played more between his first and second goal for his country or had a longer time period between them?”
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