"Is the 12-year-old who made his debut in the Bolivian league at the weekend the world's youngest ever professional footballer?" asks Pete Watmore.

Unless any of the great Knowledge populace knows better, then yes, yes he is Pete. In case you missed the story, Mauricio Baldivieso, a striker for Aurora in the Bolivian league, was sent on as a 39th-minute substitute in a first division match against La Paz on Sunday, three days before his 13th birthday – which is today, incidentally.

Although it reportedly all ended in tears, the result of some rough marking from the La Paz defence, the player's coach, the former Bolivia midfielder Julio Cesar Baldivieso (also the player's father) offered the following impartial assessment of his son's ability: "I'm very proud, he's got a lot of talent."

According to reports in South America, Baldivieso beat a record set by Peru's Fernando Garcia, who turned out for Juan Aurich in 2001 aged 13. It is, however, all but impossible to verify the age of some other whipper-snappers who may have bounded out in the men's game before their voices had broken.

The former Manchester United player Souleymane Mamam, for instance, is still listed by Fifa as the youngest-ever player in a World Cup qualifying match, supposedly aged 13 years and 310 days when he appeared for Togo against Zambia in May 2001. Presumably this was not his senior debut, meaning it's possible he was close to Baldivieso's age when he first stepped out, although question marks have continued to hover over Maman's claims throughout his career. When he appeared for Royal Antwerp on loan from United, for instance, the club listed his year of birth as 1985, meaning he was at least 16 at the time of the Togo-Zambia match.

The Ghana-born United States international Freddy Adu first attracted the attentions of the Washington Post when he was but 12 years old, and there was much Adu in Sports Illustrated in 2003, when the striker was 13. He had to wait until 14 to sign a professional contract at DC United, however, and was two months shy of 15 when he made his full debut.

That makes Adu barely younger than the youngest-ever verified league player in this country: the Barnsley striker Reuben Noble-Lazarus, who was 15 years 45 days old when he appeared against Ipswich Town last September. As for the English top flight, Fulham's defender Matthew Briggs is the youngest ever to grace the Premier League turf. He was 16 years and 65 days old when he came on as a substitute in May 2007, but has yet to make a first-team appearance since.

CLUBS SPONSORED BY BANDS (3)

Three weeks ago we did our best to provide a comprehensive list of football teams who have been sponsored by bands. It wasn't good enough, so a week ago we tried to fill in the gaps. That wasn't good enough either. So here's mark III.

"While this is not a professional football team, our Rowsley Sunday League team, Park Hall Rangers FC, were sponsored by none other than Irish boyband Boyzone back in the 1997-98 season," pipes Liam Bradley. "Our manager, Dave Mannion, had contacts within the Rally Driving industry who happened to know band member Shane Lynch. He and the other band members of Boyzone agreed to provide us with our football strips, much to the bemusement/amusement of opposition teams who would often 'take the proverbial' before kick off, by singing a medley of Boyzone's chart hits to us.

"One particular game, this heavily backfired on the opposition, who despite being 4-0 up against us at half time, ended up 5-4 losers! On that particular occasion, I experienced the surreal prospect of a post-game congratulatory chat with Shane Lynch himself, who proceeded to invite me backstage along with two other lucky team-mates to meet Boyzone after one of their world tour gigs!"

Bradley has proof as well. Thanks for this terrific picture of fringes, popsters and Bradley himself in the in the middle.

Park Hall Rangers FC with Boyzone. Liam Bradley is in the middle.

Furthermore: "Hello, The Knowledge," begins Andrew Stevens. "Stubborn polyglot Europhile Andrew Eldtrich, of The Sisters of Mercy, allegedly lived near the Hamburg Reeperbahn at one point, during which time he developed a fondness for FC St Pauli. He definitely did sponsor one of the stands for a bit, as seen here ..."

Andrew Eldritch of the Sisters of Mercy and his football stadium.

RUBBISH!

"I'm sure when I was a kid, I was watching Saint and Greavsie and they had a feature on former Manchester City idol David White," begins Robert Whitaker. "I'm sure they mentioned him having a second job working at a rubbish tip. Can you verify if this was true?"

Despite an initial inability to confirm or deny such rumours, the Knowledge mailbox has become a veritable landfill this week with readers' personal experience of White the Waste and Metals Recycling impressario.

"I'm surprised you haven't found this out for yourself," chastised Peter McMullan, among others, "but [White] owns a very successful waste reclamation business in Manchester called White Reclamation Limited. I believe it is a family business started by his father Stewart, which David now runs. If you click the Meet The Team section you can see David is the current MD. I've done quite a bit of business with them as they service our construction sites," continues McMullan's proud boast.

(Thanks also to Andy Burrows for providing the opening times.)

KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVE

The gloom of October 2005 was temporarily brightened by a hilarious penalty cock-up by Arsenal's Thierry Henry and Robert Pires at Highbury, prompting Lee McGleish to send the Knowledge off in search of other such penalty pioneers. "After watching the Henry/Pires penalty shambles at the weekend, I was wondering if the Johan Cruyff/Jesper Olsen incident was the only previous example of the 'two-man penalty'?" Lee wrote. The search ended with a famous Belgian.

Well, Lee, despite Monsieur Henry admitting to having taken his inspiration from the Ajax pair's famous spot-kick in 1982, there are three far earlier examples of the cheeky 'tap penalty'.

On 21 November 1964, Plymouth Argyle beat Manchester City 3-2 in a Division Two game at Home Park. The winning goal came from Mike Trebilcock – after the referee gave the Pilgrims a penalty, Johnny Newman tapped the ball sideways, enabling Trebilcock to race in and fire home. A detailed match report from the game includes dramatic video footage of the incident – perhaps it should be forwarded on to Highbury to show Thierry and Robert how it's done.

According to the accompanying article, however, Argyle had already employed the trick once before. And some further digging reveals that Newman was involved again - on 6 February 1961, in the 5-3 League Cup fourth-round, second replay defeat to Aston Villa. This time, Wilf Carter nudged the ball for Newman to run in and crash home.

Yet the nearest variation to the 'two-touch' penalty can be tracked back even further; all the way to 5 June 1957 in fact, when Belgium entertained Iceland in a World Cup qualifying tie. Already leading 6-1, Belgium were awarded a 44th-minute penalty. Up stepped Rik Coppens to take it, but instead of firing towards Björgvin Hermannsson in the Iceland goal, Coppens nonchalantly passed to team-mate André Piters, who returned the favour, enabling the former to score past a stunned Hermannsson. The match ended 8-3 and Coppens went on to be voted 73rd on a list of all-time great Belgians.

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

Can you help?

"In 2006, Bolton had 10 players in their squad (Gardner, Ben Haim, Okocha, Jaidi, Jaaskelainen, Nakata, Borgetti, Diouf, Speed and Fadiga) who have all captained their country. Has there ever been a squad that has contained more international skippers?" wonders David Broome.

Meanwhile a correspondent named Gökhan wants to know: "Are there any stadiums whose name was inspired by a religion, persuasion or a sect?"

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