Plus: teams playing derbies in change or third strips, rapid promotions to senior international sides and did a Newcastle player invent the windscreen wiper? Send your questions and answers to knowledge@theguardian.com or tweet @TheKnowledge_GU

“In light of next year’s World Cup taking shape, I spent the international break reliving the last World Cup and noticed that Argentina scored their last goal in the competition in the eighth minute of their quarter-final against Belgium,” begins Boris Cule. “Despite this, they came within minutes of a penalty shoot-out in the final, which they may well have won. What is the longest goalless run of any winning team at a major competition? And my second question is, given that Argentina went without a goal for a total of 322 minutes (they played extra-time in both the semi and final), was this the longest goalless run of any team in any major competition ever?”



Markus Palder has been looking back to Italia 90 and has a slight twist on the question as he has only included goals scored from open play. “West Germany may have scored in each of their games during their winning run, but their last outfield goal was Andreas Brehme’s in the 82nd minute in the last-16 match against Holland. Lothar Matthäus scored a penalty against the then CSFR in the quarter final before Brehme’s deflected free-kick against England helped take the game to penalties before Brehme decided the whole tournament from the spot against Argentina.” That gave the side a run of three complete matches, and 303 minutes in total, without a goal from open play. Take the run into the 1994 World Cup, when they had merged with East Germany, and Jürgen Klinsmann’s 61st minute strike against Bolivia takes that run to 364 minutes.

Cormac McClean also has been looking back to the 90s: “I remember watching the 1992 Africa Cup of Nations, which Ivory Coast won on penalties after a 0-0 draw with Ghana; they also won the semi-final on penalties after a 0-0 draw with Cameroon. They beat Zaire 1-0 in extra-time in the quarter-final, and in fact four of their five games in the tournament were goalless after 90 minutes (they drew 0-0 with Congo in their second group game), and two of those were goalless after extra time. They dwon their opening game 3-0 against Algeria but seemed to take an ultra-defensive approach from that point on.” It means they only went 240 minutes without a goal, however.

Messi is asked for selfie by Jamaica’s Deshorn Brown in Copa América Read more

Dirk Maas may have the answer, though. “Ukraine made their debut at the European Championship in 2012,” he writes. “They won their first match against Sweden, thanks to a 62nd-minute winning goal by Andriy Shevchenko. They haven’t scored a goal since then in the tournament. Against France, England, Germany, Northern Ireland and Poland they’ve remained goalless: 478 minutes without a goal in the European Championship. However, the Copa América-invitees Jamaica twice took part in the South American football championship, in 2015 and 2016. They played six group-stage matches without scoring a goal: 540 minutes.”

Derby kit clashes

“Which derby-match teams have to change to their away/change/third strip when they play?” asks Colin Harris.

“Allow me to draw your attention to Colchester United, who have to wear their change kit for not just one, but three different rivals,” writes the helpful Daniel Smith. The U’s home colours of blue and white stripes are deemed to clash with the navy blue of Essex rivals Southend United. The nearest geographic rival in Ipswich Town also wear blue and white, while in one of the stranger derbies in league football (born from a bad blood, non-league, ding-dong rivalry in the 90s driven by Roy McDonough and Martin O’Neill), Wycombe Wanderers don navy and blue quarters. At least in ‘The U’s’ derby, Colchester and Cambridge only share a nickname and not colours ...”

Daniel goes on to point out: “The west London derby of QPR and Chelsea would require change kits (as would potentially QPR and Fulham if more white than blue features on the hoops of QPR), the A627 derby of Oldham and Rochdale, the Tees-Wear derby of Middlesborough and Sunderland, the New Forest derby of Bournemouth and Southampton, and of course, leaving the most obvious one until last, the north-west derby of Manchester United v Liverpool.”



Pádraig McAuliffe says there’s a clash in Dublin whenever three of the big four there play each other: “St. Patrick’s Athletic, Shelbourne and Bohemians have red as a primary or secondary colour (with the exception being Shamrock Rovers, who play in green and white hoops), so the away side is usually wearing a change strip.”



The Knowledge | Which clubs have had the longest wait for a derby? | John Ashdown Read more

It gets tricky in the Ruhr when three of the local sides there face each other, as Julian Unkel writes: “Three of the big Ruhr teams – Schalke 04, Bochum and Duisburg – share blue and white as their primary colours (in distinction to the Revierderby, Schalke v Dortmund, matches between these teams are often called kleines Revierderby). While some time has passed (10 years, to be exact) since all three teams played in the same league, the latest kleines Revierderby was played in August in 2. Bundesliga, with Bochum playing at Duisburg in their orange-coloured third kit.”

From juniors to seniors in a day

“What is the shortest time between a player featuring for an age group national team and the full team?” tweets Nathan Eaton.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Theo Walcott makes his England debut against Hungary on 30 May 2006.

“Back in the early 1980s, the West Germany winger Pierre Littbarski played a game for the country’s Under-21 team and was promptly flown off to meet up with the full national team for a match just a couple of days later against, as far as I can remember, England,” recalls Chris Fowler. “I’m afraid I can’t be any more precise than ‘early 1980s’, but I’m sure it happened.” Hopefully, we can be a touch more precise, Chris. Littbarski regularly flitted between the Under-21s and the senior side and, on 12 October 1982, he scored a hat-trick against England Under-21s in Bremen’s Weser-Stadion during the second leg of the Under-21 Championship final (England won the first leg 3-1 and the overall tie 5-4 on aggregate). The next day he was at Wembley, coming on as a 68th-minute substitute as Bobby Robson’s England lost 2-1 to the West Germany senior side.



Theo Walcott is perhaps the closest equivalent in England, and went from the England B team, which lost 2-1 to Belarus on 25 May 2006, to the senior team who beat Hungary 3-1 five days later. He’s done similar in reverse, too. In June 2009 Walcott played in England’s two World Cup qualifiers against Kazakhstan (6 June) and Andorra (10 June), before immediately leaving the senior squad for the Under-21s and playing against Finland in the European Under-21 Championship on 15 June.

Which individuals have sponsored a professional club’s shirt? (slight return)

In response to last week’s question, Isaac Ashe tweets to point out that, though Sleaford Mods are a duo rather than an individual, they nonetheless agreed to sponsor Seven Sisters AFC under-9s in South Wales after one of the squad’s managers contacted them. “He explained that mostly it was fast food chains and open cast mines that were normal sponsors,” said the band’s singer Jason Williamson. “He felt that was just too much as they had the monopoly on such areas and not in a good way. Myself and Steve, our manager, obliged. It’s a positive thing.”

Sleaford Mods (@sleafordmods) We sponsored The Seven Sisters AFC U9's from South Wales. Thanks to @Phyllisdoris1 for getting in touch. pic.twitter.com/uNaCrtsWCT

Knowledge archive

“Is it true that a Newcastle United player invented the windscreen wiper?” asked a disbelieving Warren Rose in 2009.

Almost, Warren, almost. Football can indeed claim for itself a part in the invention of the windscreen wiper, but it was a Newcastle fan rather than a player who came up with the idea.

Are Newcastle United England's only united United? | The Knowledge Read more

It’s now more than a 100 years since Gladstone Adams drove his Darracq car to Crystal Palace Park for the 1908 FA Cup final between Wolves and his beloved Newcastle United. Adams’s side were the overwhelming favourites against Second Division Wolves, but the underdogs ran out 3–1 winners, handing Newcastle their third final defeat in four years.

It’s fair to suggest then that Adams wasn’t in the best of moods on the journey home. And his disposition would have deteriorated further when he found himself in the middle of an unseasonable snowstorm. Back then, windscreens had to be cleared by hand and it was on one of these frosty-fingered breaks by the side of the road that Adams came up with the idea of a mechanised blade that could run whilst the car was in motion.

Can you help?

“After the north London derby, a friend and I were imagining what some of the world’s most unlikely split scarves might be,” writes Chris Corrigan. “It’s fun to imagine, but in real life, what are examples of unbelievably unlikely split scarves?”

“Has a caretaker manager ever been sacked other than being replaced by a permanent manager? Just thinking about David Unsworth,” asks David Collins.

“Schalke’s second-half comeback from 0-4 down to drawing 4-4 with Dortmund got me thinking: what is the biggest goals deficit a team has come back from to earn a point or win a game in a second half?” asks George Jones.

“Everton have conceded nine goals in their last two games and are due to play West Ham on Wednesday evening. All three games were – or are – on TV. What is the maximum number of goals a team has conceded on live TV in one week?” tweets @colinham.