“Which player had the nationality with the lowest Fifa world ranking at the time of him winning the Premier League?” tweets TheTinBoonie.
Boris Cule rushes to the front of the queue to get his answer in first. “Having looked at the list of countries that produced Premier League winners, the obvious candidates seemed Liberia, Latvia and Iceland,” he writes. “And, indeed, Iceland were ranked 95th in the world when Eidur Gudjohnsen won the title with Chelsea in 2005, and were ranked 97th when he repeated the feat in 2006. Liberia were ranked 98th when Christopher Wreh won the title with Arsenal in 1998, but Latvia were ranked 105th when Igors Stepanovs won it with Arsenal in 2002.
“That seemed to be the end of it, as further search (Jamaica, Algeria, Trinidad and Tobago, etc) yielded no results, until, to my surprise, up popped the surprising winner in Jonny Evans, who won the title in 2013 with Manchester United at a time when Northern Ireland were ranked 119th in the world. What makes this even more remarkable is that Northern Ireland were ranked 97th just a month earlier, and were ranked 27th when Evans won his first title in 2009. Northern Ireland were ranked 111th when Roy Carroll won the title with Manchester United in 2003, putting him in second place behind Evans.”
Ian Cade has come up with a list of players based on the Fifa rankings of the national team they played for at the end of the year in which they won the title, rather than in May. This would put Carroll top:
Roy Carroll: Manchester United, 2003, Northern Ireland, 122
Ryan Giggs: Manchester United, 2000, Wales, 109
Christopher Wreh: Arsenal, 1998, Liberia, 108
Giggs: Manchester United, 1997, Wales, 102
Giggs: Manchester United, 2001, Wales, 100
Giggs: Manchester United, 1999, Wales, 98
Eidur Gudjohnsen: Chelsea, 2005, Iceland, 94
Gudjohnsen: Chelsea, 2004, Iceland, 93
Johnny Evans: Manchester United, 2013, Northern Ireland, 89
We’re minded to go with the ranking at the moment the team was crowned Premier League champions, but the above list does show that Manchester United have been a fruitful home for low-ranked internationals. Tom Aldous got in touch with a player who would have beaten Evans, Carroll et al had he made 10 appearances for Leicester in the season he arrived. “Faiq Bolkiah joined in March 2016 so he was part of the squad when they won the title,” writes Tom. “Faiq is from Brunei, who were ranked 190th at the time, but he didn’t play a single minute for them in the league.” He doesn’t count then, alas. Sorry.
Random guests at footballers’ weddings (2)
Following on from unlikely guests at players’ weddings, here are some we missed …
“The one and only Nelson Mandela attended former Charlton Athletic striker Shaun Bartlett’s wedding,” writes Nicholas Walmsley. Here’s the story.
“Gylfi Sigurdsson got married at Lake Como last week, with royal wedding-like coverage in the Icelandic media,” notes Svein Sigþórsson. “For some reason, Julie Benz, an actress most famous for playing Dexter’s wife in the serial killer TV series, made an appearance there, alongside various teammates from the national team and some close friends from former club sides. I still have no idea why she was there.” Benz’s other half is Rich Orosco, who works for LAFC.
Meanwhile, Noel Baker “feels compelled to highlight an inaccuracy in your otherwise great piece, if only to protect the enduring reputation of AC/DC. As reported in Marca, Sergio Ramos didn’t manage to bag the genius Antipodean rockers, and instead had to make do with Europe. I’d like to think Angus Young and co would have had more sense than to pitch up at his wedding, but in any event due to various retirements and with newish frontman Axl Rose back in the Guns N’ Roses fold, if they had actually played his wedding bash it would have been sensational news.”
Captains with roles reversed
“Are there any instances of two players who are teammates for club and country where one is captain of their club but the other is captain of their country?” asks James Robinson.
Indeed they have, James – and it’s over to Italy for the answer. “Fabio Cannavaro became of the captain of Italy regularly from 2002 and he famously lifted the world cup as the skipper for Italy when they won the tournament in 2006,” writes Rit Nanda. However, during this period, particularly from 2004-06, when he played for Juventus, he played under the captaincy of Alessandro Del Piero. So, from 2004 to 2006, Del Piero captained Cannavaro at club level with Juventus and vice versa at the international level with Italy.
Knowledge archive
“Former Serbian midfielder Vladimir Jugovic played for, among other clubs, Red Star Belgrade, Sampdoria, Juventus, Lazio and Inter,” so said Bogdan Kotarlic in November 2012. “It enabled him to participate in no fewer than five derby matches where the teams from the same city were involved. Has any other player taken part in more derbies?”
The popular pub quiz answer is that German hair model Christian Ziege also played five derbies, appearing for Liverpool against Everton, Milan against Inter, Bayern Munich against TSV 1860, Tottenham against Arsenal and Middlesbrough against Newcastle and Sunderland. We have also read somewhere that Ray Wilkins played in five: west London, Manchester, Milan, Glasgow and Edinburgh, after coming off the bench for Hibs a few days before moving to Millwall.
But two players have gone one better: Richard Gough has six derbies to his name, including Dundee, north London, Glasgow, Forest v Derby, the Merseyside set-to and San José Clash versus LA Galaxy. “It’s like watching Big Brother,” Gough said of the Old Firm matches in March 2011. “The product is not great at the minute but you know there is going to be an accident happening.” The other is Paul Stewart (Spurs v Arsenal, Liverpool v Everton, Crystal Palace v Millwall, Wolves v West Brom, Sunderland v Newcastle and Stoke v Port Vale). Contrary to popular opinion, he never played in the Manchester derby.
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“Which women have won a major football trophy while pregnant?” asks Peter Pollock.
“What is the most penalty-ish major men’s or women’s tournament ever?” wonders Tom Levine. “Either in terms of percentage of goals or percentage of goals which impact on a result?”
James
(@jamesv_t)Apart from the Avanhard stadium in Pripyat, have there been any other stadia that have opened but never had a match played there?
“Adama Traoré scored for Mali against Mauritania and was then replaced by Adama Traoré, who also scored,” notes Daniel Goldman. “Has this ever happened with other names?”
GD
(@djgcfum)Which team had the first away following?
“As of 2019, Villarreal have yet to win a major trophy in Spain,” writes Kevin Harkin. “However, they have won 84 games in European competitions (Champions League, Europa League, Intertoto Cup), reaching four semi-finals so far. Is this the best overall European record for a club that has never won a major competition?”
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