“Sorry to lower the tone but curiosity got the better of me: last week in Peru, Sebastian Muñoz was sent off for appearing to urinate at the side of the pitch, while in Sweden in 2016, Adam Lindin Ljungkvist was given a second yellow card for ‘unsportsmanlike’ behaviour when he audibly broke wind. Are there any other examples of players being given their marching orders for bodily functionality?” wonders Dave Payn.
Let’s start with a bit of housekeeping. We haven’t included spitting, because Rudi Völler has suffered enough, but we have broadened the question to include unpunished acts of biology, partly so we can start with the most famous egestion of all. Gary Lineker didn’t receive a yellow card during his career, never mind a red, not even in England’s opening match of the 1990 World Cup. “I tried to tackle someone, stretched and relaxed myself and erm …” he said in 2010. “You can see myself rubbing the ground like a dog trying to clean it. It was the most horrendous experience of my life.”
At the same tournament, Argentina’s back-up goalkeeper Sergio Goycochea – whose spectacular penalty-saving exploits were the main reason a poor team reached the final – developed an unlikely superstition. He needed to have a tinkle before their shootout against Yugoslavia in the quarter-finals and did so as discreetly as possible. When Goycochea saved the last two penalties, his understanding of causation went haywire.
“There was another shootout in the semi-final against Italy so I went again and we won again. It was my lucky charm and I went before every shootout. I was very subtle, nobody complained.” Goycochea saved Italy’s last two penalties, from Roberto Donadoni and Aldo Serena, with Diego Maradona completing the metaphor from a great height.
The Stuttgart keeper Jens Lehmann reportedly paid homage to Goycochea behind the goal during a Champions League match in 2009. “I thought he handled it very expertly,” said the club’s director of sport. “It was a tricky situation … it reminded me of the Tour de France – sometimes there are simply no options.”
Sometimes there are plenty of alternatives, but they’re all a bit boring. In 2011, Bristol Rovers’ Jordan Goddard made his first-team debut as an injury-time substitute in an FA Cup tie against Corby Town. An occasion to recall with pride, were it not for the fact he got rid of any pre-debut nerves near a corner flag while warming up. “‘I’ve never seen anything like it,” Corby fan James Crawford told the Sun. “He was doing stretches, then put his hands in his shorts and pulled himself out.”
In 2016, Middlesbrough defender Luke Ayling, then of Bristol City, was banned from the Cheltenham Festival after being caught with his flies down. A couple of years later, a Middlesbrough supporter crossed the banter line by adding his own mixer to a water bottle belonging to the QPR keeper Alex Smithies. A similar incident occurred in an FA Trophy match in 2022 – but this time the Warrington Town keeper Tony Thompson saw it happen and confronted the perpetrator, an act of vigilante justice for which he was sent off.
In 2020, Coleraine’s Eoin Bradley was given a six-match ban for doing the necessary before extra-time in an Irish Cup semi-final against Ballymena. Mansfield’s Adi Yussuf got five matches for divesting himself at the back of a stand in 2016. Blackfield & Langley goalkeeper Connor Maseko didn’t have to wait for retrospective punishment. He was given a straight red when he watered a hedge during an FA Cup qualifying round game against Shepton Mallet in 2022.
And while it has almost nothing to do with the question, we can’t go without mentioning dear old Barry Fry’s attempt to break the curse of St Andrew’s by lightening himself on all four corner flags. We’ve covered this in the past, but it’s well worth revisiting.
Why bother?
“Which players have scored Premier League hat-tricks and ended up on the losing side?” asks Ike Proud.
The last 22 Premier League hat-tricks have all been scored in victory, going back to Leandro Trossard’s for Brighton in a 3-3 draw at Anfield in October 2022. To find a truly futile hat-trick, you have to go back to 2007 when Blackburn’s Roque Santa Cruz scored all their goals in a 5-3 defeat at Wigan. Marcus Bent scored a more meaningful hat-trick for the home side.
In all there have been five Premier League hat-tricks in defeat. The first two were scored a man synonymous with brilliance in a poor team: Matthew Le Tissier. The matches were Oldham 4-3 Southampton on the last day of the 1992-93 season – the game that kept the Latics up and relegated Crystal Palace – and Southampton 3-4 Nottingham Forest on the opening day of the 1995-96 season. Le Tissier’s mood didn’t improve when he was booked late on for retaliating to a bad tackle by Ian Woan.
In the same season, Coventry’s Dion Dublin scored all their goals in a 4-3 defeat at Sheffield Wednesday. And at the start of 1996-97, Dwight Yorke couldn’t stop Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle beating Aston Villa 4-3 in a Monday night thriller. That was it until Santa Cruz in 2007, though there have been more recent examples in some of the other big European leagues. Here’s a selection:
Serie A, 2011-12 Napoli 6-3 Cagliari (Larrivey 3)
La Liga, 2012-13 Real Madrid 4-3 Real Sociedad (Xabi Prieto 3)
Serie A, 2017-18 Fiorentina 3-4 Lazio (Veretout 3)
La Liga, 2017-18 Levante 5-4 Barcelona (Coutinho 3)
Bundesliga, 2021-22 Borussia Dortmund 3-4 VfL Bochum (Haaland 3)
La Liga, 2023-24 Girona 4-3 Atlético Madrid (Morata 3)
If you’re interested, and the fact you’ve got this far suggests you are, we’ve looked in the past at players ending up on the losing side despite scoring four goals.
Bottoms up
“On 23 August, bottom club Drogheda United defeated Sligo Rovers 7-0 in the League of Ireland Premier Division. The match was their 28th of a 36-game season. Excluding the first few weeks of the season, when a strong team might find themselves bottom, has the team in last place ever won by a bigger margin?” asks Colm Kearns.
Chris Roe’s magic Football League database has coughed up a couple of cases from the distant past. In November 1934, in the old Division One, Huddersfield plugged mid-table Liverpool 8-0. Both teams were playing their 14th league game of the season (of 42). Huddersfield finished the season in 16th and avoided relegation quite comfortably.
The biggest victory, certainly in England, comes from the 1892-93 season. Newton Heath (later to become Manchester United) were bottom after six games when they eviscerated fourth-placed Wolves 10-1. Thanks also to Mike Slattery for that one. Newton Heath finished bottom, although they also walloped Derby 7-1 later in the season. They avoided relegation by winning a playoff against Small Heath (a precursor of Birmingham City), but went down the following season.
More recent examples in English football include Burnley 5-0 Sheffield United (Premier League, December 2023), Derby 6-2 Southampton (Division One, May 1991; Derby’s only win in the last 23 games that season) and Brighton & Hove Albion 5-0 Hartlepool in the old Division Three in February 1997. The margin of that victory ultimately kept Brighton in the Football League: they finished second from bottom by virtue of scoring 53 goals to Hereford’s 50.
Knowledge archive
“I vaguely recall hearing that Shay Given has a special bottle of water he puts in his goal before every match,” recalled Damien Hensley in 2007. “Is this really true?”
Well, Damien, according to the man himself, it was. Prior to every game he played, the Republic of Ireland keeper placed a vial of Lourdes holy water at the back of his goal as a lucky charm. “I carry it in my kit bag and it goes everywhere with me,” he told the Irish News of the World in 2002. Apparently, the water carried with it powers that many Roman Catholics ascribe to the Lourdes spring, where apparitions of the Virgin Mary first appeared in 1858. Given also took a picture of his late mother wherever he goes. “He’s been doing it since he was small,” revealed his father Seamus. “I don’t know how much he remembers her because he was so young when she died, but he doesn’t want to forget about her.” Read more …
Can you help?
“Finland’s Topi Keskinen has several tattoos, including one of Wayne Rooney,” begins Anna Mayors. “Are any other footballers inked with other players?”
“Is Michael Olise the first English-born player to turn out for the senior side of another ‘major footballing power’?” wonders Eddie Eyers. [For the sake of simplicity, let’s keep it to teams that have won the World Cup – Ed.]
“Morecambe have started their League Two campaign with five consecutive 1-0 defeats. Is this the longest run with the same result and score at the start of a season, or even at any point?” asks Gareth Thomas (and dozens of others).
Now that San Marino have ended their 140 game winless run who has the longest winless run in International football?
— Sam Clay (@SamClay2708) September 10, 2024
“Everton were beaten 3-2 by Bournemouth despite being 2-0 up after 86 minutes. Has a team ever been two goals ahead so late in a top-flight game and still lost?” asks Shaun Tooze.
“A friend recently brought to my attention that Luka Peruzovic, who won the 1982-83 Uefa Cup with Anderlecht, is the brother of WWE Hall of Famer Nikolai Volkoff,” notes Jack Hayward. “Do any other footballers have familial links to professional wrestling?”
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