Guardian sport 

Which goalkeepers have got an assist with almighty throws down field?

Plus: clubs named after kit sponsors, more forgetful footballers and which club had the first official website?
  
  

Peter Schmeichel of Manchester United throws the ball
Peter Schmeichel became as famous for his huge throws as his great saves after joining Manchester United in 1991. Photograph: Ben Radford/Getty Images

“During England Under-21s European Championship win, James Trafford made their second goal against Germany with a throw to Harvey Elliott. Which other goalkeepers have got an assist with their hands?” tweets Dan Griffin.

Elliott’s brilliant solo effort added more gloss to a tournament Trafford will never want to forget: no goals conceded, one created. Goalkeeper assists are increasingly common – there have been 95 in the Premier League era – though the majority involved a timely punt downfield rather than a throw.

Peter Schmeichel got the first of those 95 with a huge up and under at Bramall Lane on 15 August 1992. But his right arm was a much greater weapon than his right foot. When he joined Manchester United in 1991, Schmeichel’s ability to fling the ball more than half the length of the field, a skill he developed playing handball in Denmark, was a revelation. His throws, allied to the pace of Ryan Giggs and Andrei Kanchelskis in particular, turned United into a great counterattacking team almost overnight.

In his first season, Schmeichel helped make a crucial late winner for Clayton Blackmore at Sheffield United and though that didn’t count as an assist he got a few when the Premier League era began. Schmeichel’s throws led to goals for Kanchelskis against QPR in February 1994 and Ole Gunnar Solskjær against Sunderland in December 1996.

Schmeichel joined Manchester City in 2002, via Sporting CP and Aston Villa. The man he replaced at Maine Road, Carlo Nash, had taken a leaf out of his book the previous season.

We can think of at least two other goalkeepers who have played a (small) part in great solo goals. Manuel Almunia set up Cesc Fàbregas when Arsenal trounced Everton 6-1 on the opening day of the 2009-10 season (you can see the goal here, though not the throw) and Dean Kiely’s throw led to Charlton’s Kevin Lisbie completing a glorious hat-trick against Liverpool in 2003.

And finally, why not luxuriate in one of the greatest route one goals of all time.

Clubs named after their kit sponsor

Aside from the Red Bull network, whose story has been told before, there are at least two cases of teams sharing a name with their sponsor.

“I’d like to nominate my home town team, Fehérvár,” writes Peter Guber. “We have a reputation for changing our name with great frequency. The critics are harsh, but fair: we have played under 19 (!) different names since our foundation in 1941. Some English readers will remember us as Videoton, who beat Manchester United in the Uefa Cup in 1984-85.

“From 2018-23, when the shirt sponsor was MOL, the club was known as MOL Vidi FC and then MOL Fehérvár FC. As an aside, we may be the first team in which the ‘FC’ part of the team name has appeared both in front of and after the name of the town. Between 2004-09, we participated as FC Fehérvár; as of this season, with MOL’s sponsorship coming to an end, we will be known as Fehérvár FC.”

The other example involves one of the more iconic kit sponsors of the late 1980s and early 1990s, especially when it was emblazoned across the chest of players such as Romario and Ronaldo.

It’s worth stressing that Philips Sports Vereniging existed for 69 years before Philips became their shirt sponsor in 1982. Even so, it meant the club shared a name with its sponsor. And frankly we’ll use any excuse to publish a picture of Romario in that kit.

Total Network Solutions of the Cymru Premier are worth a mention, too. As far as we’re aware, they are the only British club to be named after a sponsor. We can’t find pictorial evidence TNS was emblazoned across their shirt but it was certainly the name on the badge. They’re now known as The New Saints but when they played against Liverpool in the 2005-06 Champions League they were named after that local computer company – who forked out around £250,000 for the honour – and had been since 1996. They became The New Saints a year later after TNS (the company) was taken over by British Telecom.

Another non-arrival

In June, we looked at players who had forgotten to turn up for a game. Another person who was denied membership of Big Ron’s Wide Awake Club was the former Bolton and West Brom striker Fabian de Freitas.

Knowledge archive

“Who were the first football club to have an official website?” wondered Chris White in 2016. “And how about an unofficial website? I noticed that TWTD, Ipswich Town’s unofficial fan site, has been going since 1995, so surely must be one of the first. Also, who were the first clubs to start using social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter?”

“I can help,” yells Martyn Amos, thrusting his arm in the air. “Ipswich Town were, indeed, the first club to have a website (unofficial or otherwise). In fact, I used to help maintain it. It was set up in 1990 by Phil Clarke, who worked at BT in Martlesham (near Ipswich) when the web was still very much experimental. He then passed it on (1993-1995) to Paul Felton, who was a student at UEA in Norwich (boo, hiss).

“After Paul graduated, he passed it on to me, as I was, at the time, a PhD student at Warwick (1995-1996). Paul then took it back in 1996, and ran it until 2001, when the club finally woke up to the potential of the web, and got a local company called AWS to run it … There used to be some discussion with Sheffield United fans about our claim to primacy, but I believe that it was decided in our favour.”

As for unofficial websites … “Very likely to be Reading’s Hob Nob Anyone which has been knocking around since November 1994,” reckons Peter Sorrill. “Although the distinction between ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ was moot in the early 90s as most clubs weren’t that tech savvy. Here’s the Evening Post’s report on its 20th anniversary from 2014.” In it, founder Graham Loader explains: “I did computing and then I found out about the internet and realised you could do email and all that stuff. I didn’t think it would get big but it got quite big quite quickly. People would contact me and say how exciting it was that they could read about Reading in places like Canada and Australia.”

But Alex Lopez-Ortiz thinks he can go earlier. “The ‘What’s New, September 1993’ NCSA webpage lists: ‘Information on the Sheffield Wednesday Football Club at Nottingham University [website] is online.’ This is very early in the life of the web. NCSA mosaic, which was what popularised the web, was introduced in January of that year.”

Interactive

Can you help?

“Shea Charles has made eight appearances for Northern Ireland but has only made one for Manchester City. Can anyone beat his international/club appearances ratio of 8:1?” asks Ricardio Sentulio.

“Penybont’s (third in Cymru Premier) are playing FC Santa Coloma (third in the Andorran First Division) in the Europa Conference League,” writes John Bailey. “Who are the two ‘smallest’ (eg ground capacity/amateur/non-champions from small nations) clubs to ever play a competitive international fixture? And who is the smallest/least successful team to ever actually qualify for the group stages of a European competition?”

“Ashley Young has just agreed a one-year deal to play for Sean Dyche’s Everton; the two of them were teammates at Watford almost 20 years ago,” notes Jonny Sharples. “What is the longest gap between two players being teammates and then one managing the other?”

• Mail us your questions or tweet @TheKnowledge_GU.

 

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