“The current Sligo Rovers goalkeeper, Michéal Schlingermann, hails from County Mayo and his dad is German,” reports Liam Maloney. “And he has the word ‘German’ as part of his surname. Are there other examples of players’ surnames containing a word that directly connects to their nationality or that of either of their parents?”

Stephen Ireland is the obvious one, yelled just about everyone, and plenty suggested Petr Cech, whose name in Czech means, erm, Czech. “Vincenzo Italiano immediately springs to mind,” hollered James Byrne. “His surname is even his nationality as said in his native language.”

Önder Susam has gone above and beyond, though: “The question about surnames containing the origin of the player or their parents’ origin is a tricky one for Turks because many surnames in Turkey contain the word ‘Türk’. The surname Öztürk (literally, pure Turk) is, according to Wikipedia, the eighth most popular surname in Turkey so there are hundreds of footballers around the world who are of Turkish origin and have the word Türk in their surname. Here is an XI of ‘Türks’ then:

GK: Fatih Öztürk

LB: Mehmet Türkmehmet (Turkish Mehmet – Iraqi Turkmen with Turkish nationality)

CB: Engin Aktürk (White Turk)

CB: İbrahim Öztürk

RB: Alpaslan Öztürk

DM: Kemalettin Şentürk (Happy Turk)

CM: Yıldıray Baştürk (Chief Turk)

CM: Sezer Öztürk

LW: Kubilay Türkyılmaz (Unyielding Turk)

RW: Göksu Türkdoğan (One who was born a Turk)

ST: Semih Şentürk (Happy Turk)

Manager: Yılmaz Yücetürk (Supreme Turk).”

Ending leagues early

“After the recent death of the King of Thailand it was announced that the current standings in the Thai football leagues will stand with three rounds of games still remaining,” reports Robert Davies. “This means that whoever was in the relegation zone at the time were relegated, whoever was leading the league was pronounced champion, etc. Has something like this ever happened before in any other leagues?”

Usually football adopts a “show must go on” attitude to disasters, calamities, deaths and so forth. For example, the first world war was declared in July 1914, but the Football League doughtily carried on for another season before being suspended for the duration of the conflict. There is a more recent example of a league season being curtailed, though.

“The 2015 Indonesian Super League ended after just under a month, from 4 April to 2 May,” writes Ted Kesgar. “PSSI (Persatuan Sepakbola Seluruh Indonesia, our FA) discontinued the season because Imam Nahrawi, minister of youth and sports, banned PSSI from any football-related activities (‘disavowing any sporting-related activities of Persatuan Sepakbola Seluruh Indonesia’). This is following an incident where two football clubs, Arema Cronus and Persebaya, were allowed to play matches despite failing to fulfil some of the requirements created by BOPI (‘Badan Olahraga Profesional Indonesia’, Indonesian Professional Sports Organization). Later, Fifa suspended Indonesia from all Fifa-related competitions because the government (minister of youth and sports) intervened with PSSI activities.

“As for the league result, it simply ended without champions or relegations. Gresik United were on the top at that time with three wins, while Persipura and Persib – the latter are the former champions – were in second and third with two wins, having played one match less than Gresik. There were no qualifications to AFC Champions League or AFC Cup because of the Fifa ban.

“Currently the football clubs are playing in the Indonesian Soccer Championship (ISC), running since April 2016 and still ongoing. Technically, ISC is not an official league because it is not run by the then-suspended PSSI. After PSSI was reinstated and Fifa lifted the ban on Indonesia, ISC still runs as the top-level competition, although I don’t expect the winners will be able to qualify for AFC competitions.”

Vowel movements

“A couple of evenings ago some friends and I realised that the exciting new Watford player (and nominative determinist) Isaac Success has only two unique consonants in his first name and surname combined,” cheers Jack Webb. “A friend later realised that Dele Alli also has only two. A whole series of questions flowed from this, none of which we got very far on. Are there any other world footballers who have only two consonants in their name, and who has the longest name with only two consonants? Do any have just the one consonant? And who has the fewest unique vowels in their name? For our discussion we disallowed footballers with only one name (Pelé, Kaka, etc) as that felt like cheating.”

This is the sort of question that requires some deep, deep thought and research, plus possibly a set of very comprehensive spreadsheets. Step forwards, the Knowledge readership.

“I can cite the Myanmar squad for the 2004 AFF Tiger Cup,” writes Russell Yong. “It features two players with only one vowel in their name (Mar La and Zaw Zaw); Zaw Zaw also has only two consonants. Several Chinese national players past and present (Li Tie, An Qi, Wu Xi, Qu Bo and Gao Yao) have only two consonants and two vowels; one, Li Lei-lei, has only one consonant and two vowels, and another, Li Yi, has two consonants and one vowel.

“The Senegalese footballer Issa Ba has two consonants and two vowels. Correspondingly, not directly pertaining to the questions, but still of interest, one-time Manchester City winger Alioune Touré uses all five vowels in his first name alone, a feat, as far as I can tell, only matched by Tahitian international Teaonui Tehau.”

Li Tie in action for Everton in 2004. Photograph: Shaun Botterill/Getty Images

Dudley Armitage is sticking with Myanmar too. “I’d like to put forward Aung Aung Oo, the former Myanmar goalkeeper,” he offers. “Two consonants per name is pretty good. I had the pleasure of watching Oo and his team-mates beat Malaysia a few years back and was very close to catching his shirt when he launched it into the crowd. All he had on the back of the shirt was A.A.Oo 1.”

Lovely stuff. Let’s move back a little closer to home though, and Chris Goodall takes us there: “Here are the seven players to have made a Premier League appearance while sporting only two consonants in their (full) first name and surname:



Elliot Lee (two minutes for West Ham)

Eunan O’Kane (Bournemouth)

Ian Nolan (Sheffield Wednesday)

Ian Woan (Nottingham Forest)

Isaac Success (Watford)

Li Tie (Everton)

Neil Lennon (Leicester City)

“Bamidele Alli doesn’t count under the full-name rule,” continues Chris, “and neither does Ugochuku Ehiogu. There hasn’t been a one-consonant player in the Premier League. Isaac Success is indeed the longest of the two-consonant cohort. The fewest unique vowels is, unsurprisingly, one. I’ve trimmed this list by calling Y a vowel if it’s pronounced as a vowel (sorry, Bacary Sagna). Deep breath:

Adam Lallana, Allan Smart, Azar Karadas, Carl Bradshaw, Frank Lampard, Franz Carr, Glenn Helder, Graham Kavanagh, Grant Watts, Jay Tabb, John Polston, Mark Flatts, Mark Platts, Mark Ward, Per Werner Pedersen, Peter Degn, Petr Cech, Philip Gilchrist, Philip King, Philip Ifil, Ragnar Klavan, Razvan Rat, Stephen Clemence, Steve Chettle, Steve Sedgley, Steven Fletcher, Steven Pressley.

“Yes, I checked the foreign names for accents. Yes, Frank Lampard’s first name is just Frank. No, Mark Flatts and Mark Platts never played with or against each other. No, I don’t know where the rumours have come from that leagues other than the English Premier League exist!”

Hats off Chris. Hats off.

Knowledge archive

“With all the talk of Portsmouth being the first Premier League club to go into administration, and perhaps even worse down the line – winding up completely – I was wondering which club was the most successful ever which now doesn’t exist?” asked Noel Markham in 2010. “And what happened to their fans?”

Belfast Celtic won 19 Irish titles and eight cups before withdrawing from the league in 1949. In Scotland Third Lanark, title winners in 1904, cup winners in 1889 and 1905, and finalists on a further four occasions, the most recent in 1938, went out of business in 1967.



But don’t assume that their fans simply sided with First or indeed Second Lanark. “Most of the club’s support – they averaged 10,000 at the start of the 60s – were lost to football for good,” wrote Mike Watson. “Third Lanark had long been seen specifically as the club of choice for those that rejected the sectarian connections of the Old Firm. Glasgow club Pollok have long been the best-supported junior (ie non-league) club in Scotland and it has often been suggested that this was due to a significant number of Third Lanark fans transferring their allegiance to Pollok, whose ground is only a mile from Cathkin Park. Pollok remain better-supported than most Scottish Division Two and Three clubs but it’s unlikely that more than a handful of ex-Thirds fans are now attending matches at all, due to their age.”

In Germany Karlsruher FV (1910 champions), Union Berlin (1905) and VfB Leipzig (1903, 1906, 1913) have all gone bust in the last 20 years. As with Third Lanark, “phoenix” clubs were created but have yet to achieve the glories of the originals.

For thousands more questions and answers take a trip through the Knowledge archive.

Can you help?

“I noticed during last week’s EFL Cup games that the attendance at Elland Road for Leeds v Norwich was given as 22,222,” notices Liam Hughes. “Has there ever been a higher attendance where all the digits are the same?”

“After Arsenal’s Olivier Giroud scored goals with his first two touches against Sunderland, I want to ask if this is the first time this has happened or has any player scored a hat-trick with their first three touches … or four from four?” asks Antony Gee.

“Coventry City have been sponsored by three different car makers in Talbot (1980-83), Peugeot (1989-97) and Subaru (1997-2005),” points out Christian Stoermann-Næss Holum. “Can another club beat them for number of different car makers?”

“I thought Harry Winks of Spurs played pretty well in the EFL Cup match at Liverpool, but was saddened that his shirt number wasn’t 40,” sighs Tony Crawford. “Does any player’s name/number make an interesting connection?”

“Frank Brady Sr has two Irish caps, from 1926-27. He picked up the first against Italy, while his second was against Italy B (it seems to have been a full Irish team so caps were given). What is the highest number of caps a player has picked up, whereby he has played against the same country every time?” wonders Jerry Higgins.

“Which player has scored the most disallowed goals?” muses Marc Nellis.

Send your questions and answers to knowledge@theguardian.com or tweet @TheKnowledge_GU.

