“During the international break, St. Kitts and Nevis played a pair of friendly matches against San Marino, who were ranked 210th in the FIFA world rankings. Their next international is a World Cup qualifier against Costa Rica, who are currently 147 places above San Marino. I bet this isn’t the biggest gap in the rankings between successive international opponents: so what is?” asks Jack Hayward.
Stephan Wijnen gets the ball rolling during the recent Euro 2024 qualifiers. “The Netherlands played against France and Gibraltar on March 24 and 27, 2023. France was number 3 in the rankings at the time, with Gibraltar at number 200. That is a gap of 197 places. With 210 countries in the rankings, that seems difficult to beat.” From the same campaign, Carl O’Reilly points out the Republic of Ireland’s back-to-back matches with Gibraltar (then No. 201, on 19 June 2023) and France (No. 2 on 7 September 2023), for a difference of 199 places.
Difficult, but not impossible, especially if you don’t stray far from the original question. “I thought it would be productive to look at San Marino’s history and find situations where they were in a qualifying group with highly ranked teams,” begins Rob Lawshaw. “I think the answer will probably be found in the 2022 World Cup qualifiers. In October 2021, Hungary played third-placed England and were awarded a 1-1 draw at Wembley (which subsequently dropped England to fifth). In November, Hungary then faced 210th-ranked San Marino and won 4–0. That’s a hole 207 positions.”
However, Eanna Mac Craith (plus Colin Bell and Mike Slattery) can go even further, thanks to a time frame in which there were 211 teams in the rankings. “During the Euro 2020 qualifiers, Cyprus, Belgium and San Marino were in Group I,” writes Eanna. “On March 21, 2019, Cyprus defeated San Marino 5-0 in Nicosia, when the Sammarinese were number 211 at the time. Three days later, Belgium visited Nicosia and won 2-0, while Belgium was number 1 in the world at the time. The ranking difference was then 210 places. Kazakhstan repeated the same feat in 2019, losing 3-0 in Brussels on June 8 and beating San Marino 4-0 three days later.”
Going the distance
“Will Portugal versus Georgia be the most widely separated Eurozone battle ever?” posts David Ardisson.
“Not a chance,” writes Jack Hayward. “Portugal and Georgia have a huge gap, and bigger than you would think. The cities of Fajã-Grande (on the west coast of the island of Flores, in the Atlantic Ocean) and Sabatlo (on Georgia’s border with Azerbaijan) are 6,367 kilometers (3,956 miles) apart. But it is not the biggest in the history of the European Championship… Presentation of the group match for the 2004 European Championship between Portugal and Russia. The island of Flores is located 7,939 kilometers (4,933 miles) as the crow flies from the urban town of Egvekinot, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug – a greater distance than between the North and South Poles. Portugal won 2-0.”
The proposal: part two
Last week we opened ourselves up to players submitting a proposal during matches, but there was another story worth telling, as pointed out by Mark Bennett. “I must mention that the unbearable proposal of the French manager, Raymond Domenech, after the defeat at the 2008 European Championship is among the worst.”
As Paul Doyle documented at the time:
He played into the hands of his opponents in the immediate aftermath of France’s defeat by Italy last month when, in a live television interview, he refused to talk about Les Bleuselimination and instead proposed to his girlfriend, TV host Estelle Denis. When he finally raised the more relevant issues, he blamed France’s failure on bad luck, harsh refereeing and unfavorable weather, claiming that his only mistake was declaring before the tournament that France was capable of winning the tournament to win. He said he should have explained that. his real goal was the 2010 World Cup.”
And that ended so well…
Knowledge archive
“Following the likes of John Barnes, Lee Sharpe, Stan Collymore, Rodney Marsh and Francesco Coco, who other footballers have featured in reality TV shows?” James Hartshon wondered in February 2008.
“Look at former Celtic striker Jorge Cadete,” wrote Derek McGee. “He then appeared on the Portuguese version of Celebrity Big Brother. As a result, he received a small amount of public attention and in 2004 he managed to secure a short-term contract with Partick Thistle. So happy endings everywhere.
Andrew Robson pointed out that the German show featured two footballers I am in a star… I am in her race (I’m a celebrity…). “In the first series there was Jimmy Hartwig – Kevin Keegan’s strike partner at Hamburg and the first black player to play for Germany,” Andrew revealed. “A later series featured former goalkeeper Eike Immel, who played for Manchester City, Borussia Dortmund and Stuttgart.”
That wasn’t all. “Ilhan Mansiz,” noted Ilker Ugur, “who scored the golden goal for Turkey in the 2002 World Cup quarterfinal against Senegal, won the celebrity figure skating talent show two months ago.” We suspected this was something along the lines of Dancing On Ice. And who could forget Sasa Curcic, once of Villa and Bolton, winning the Serbian version of Celebrity Big Brother? Ah.
Can you help?
“Nowadays it seems mandatory for a player who scores a hat-trick to have a photo taken with the match ball at the end of a match,” emails Raymond Simpson. “When was a photo like this first taken?”
“Jonathan Hogg, captain of Huddersfield Town, has been at the club for 484 league games,” writes Richard Askham. “The club has averaged 1.17 points per game over the past eleven seasons, reflecting nine seasons of struggle and two top-five finishes. Hogg has made 345 appearances (15 of which as a substitute) and averages 1.26 points per game. He has missed 139 games while the team has averaged 0.98 points per game. The difference of 0.28 points per game is clearly significant for a club like mine, but I wonder how much bigger differences there are or have been with other long-serving players?
Was there ever a time when a club signed a player to replace another player with the exact same surname and gave him the exact same squad number?
— Nicholas Moore (@NickyMoore89) April 9, 2024
“Al-Hilal and Al-Merreikh, the two most successful teams in Sudan, will play in the Tanzanian league from next season due to the ongoing civil war in their home country,” writes Jack Hayward. “Have any other football teams been transferred to another country’s league system, and how have they fared?”
Since the advent of tactical substitutes, has a team ever taken a fit player without a replacement and willingly went back to ten men?
— Pepto Bismarck (@yezvarn_qvilaxl) April 9, 2024
“Chris Wood is having a pretty good season,” begins Iain Cargill. “Which Premier League players are from New Zealand, whose FIFA ranking is 104, and are from countries with a lower FIFA ranking?”
@TheKnowledge_GUToday, Salford City’s “tactics” saw six of their players shown a yellow card before half-time (on their way to a total of eight and an immediate red). Is this some kind of record? pic.twitter.com/vvwVLUbRmR
— Wayne Ziants (@wziants) April 6, 2024
“I recently discovered the club badge of Maltese Premier League team Sirens FC, which features what can only be described as an almost naked mermaid,” notes Cameron McGlone. “I was wondering: are there any other club badges with scantily clad people?”