“In an interview before the Capital One Cup final, Kolo Touré said he would ‘take Out’ his brother Yaya if required,” begins Ian Baker. “This got me pondering whether there has been any notable accounts of a brother getting red-carded for a particularly nasty tackle against on sibling?”

I have a little black book with two players in it, and if I get a chance to do them I will. I will make them suﬀer before I pack this game in. If I can kick them four years over the touch line, I will.

So said Jack Charlton, scourge of shinbones in the 1960s and 1970s. It would be a great story if one of those two players had been his brother Bobby, but that wasn’t the case. As you can imagine, examples of extreme sibling rivalry in football are rare. But there was a beauty in Ecuador in December 2014, when Emelec won the Primera A title by beating SC Barcelona in a two-legged play-off.



Sometimes water can be thicker than blood – but not as thick as Barcelona’s Alex Bolanos was on that day. Frances Coquelin’s stupidity in north London on Saturday has nothing on this. Barcelona had drawn the first leg 1-1 at home to Emelec. Bolanos was already on a yellow card in the second leg when, after only 10 minutes, he sent his brother Miller flying with a tackle that was more than a little overzealous. Bolanos was sent off, and Miller went on to score twice in Emelec’s 3-0 victory.

“My first foul on my brother I don’t think merited a yellow card because he dived. For the second one, I just mistimed my tackle,” said Alex. “I just allowed the adrenaline of wanting to avoid defeat at all costs, of winning this final, of reaching glory, get to me and it just didn’t happen.” Miller replied: “In the football pitch, there’s no such thing as family, we all want to win. Now that the match has finished, I stand by him.”

Ouch.

HEADS UP

“When Klaus Fischer scored 24 goals for Schalke in the 1976-77 Bundesliga season, an amazing 75% (18 goals) were from headers,” Graham Clayton points out. “Has any other player scored so many headed goals in a top-flight domestic league season?”

Twelve of Cristiano Ronaldo’s 498 goals in La Liga last season were headers. Not bad, but nowhere near Klaus Fischer. However, David Warriston has found a contender or two from the land of the heid.



“No official figures I’m afraid, but in his last season in Scotland Alan Gilzean scored 52 goals in all competitions for Dundee,” writes David. “Gillie was an outstanding header of a ball (he outjumped Gordon Banks to score the Scotland winner that year at Hampden) and since usually over half of his goals came from headers, it is almost certainly the case that he scored more than 18 headers in all. In fact of his 32 league goals it is likely that more than 18 were headers.

“A similar case can be made for Alan Gordon, a player not known much outside Scotland but who played in a similar style to Gilzean. In the 1972-73 season he scored 42 goals for Hibernian, 27 of them in the league. Like Gilzean, most of his goals came from headers; in fact he scored a hat trick of headers in a match against Dundee that season.”

SAME AGAIN



“St Albans City beat Whitehawk 6-0 at home on Saturday, having lost by the same scoreline away to Whitehawk earlier this season,” writes Andrew Levey. “Has there ever been a bigger scoreline mirrored between two teams in a season?”

There has indeed, Andrew. Alasdair Munro points out that Charlton and Plymouth beat each other 6-4 in the 1960-61 season. Not only that, but the matches were on consecutive days, 26 and 27 December.



An even more striking example comes from Dirk Maas. “In the 1983-84 Eredivisie season, FC Utrecht managed to overcome a 4-1 deficit at half-time. They scored six times in the second half. The same season they paid a visit to Rotterdam, hometown of Excelsior, the team that couldn’t maintain the 1-4 lead in Utrecht. On their own soil, the Excelsior players took revenge. They beat their opponents by exactly the same scoreline as in their previous meeting: 7-4.”



RUNAWAY LEADING GOALSCORERS IN A SINGLE SEASON (2)

In last week’s super soaraway Knowledge, we looked at strikers who were miles clear of the second top scorer in their league. Clayton Freeman has another example.

“It comes from Mexico in 2002-03,” notes Clayton. “Two seasons were played (Apertura from July to November, Clausura from January to May, with 19 matches each). During that span, Toluca’s Paraguayan striker José Saturnino Cardozo achieved dizzying feats. In the Apertura 2002 season, Cardozo scored 29 goals in 19 matches, far ahead of Atlante’s Sebastián González (13 goals). In the Clausura, Cardozo repeated as top scorer, tallying 21 goals with González again following behind with 16. Thus, Cardozo scored 50 goals in those 38 matches, 21 ahead of González. Cardozo also scored six more goals in six matches during the Apertura’s Liguilla, the postseason knockout tournament in which Toluca won the championship.”

Paraguay’s José Cardozo: particularly big in 2002-03. Photograph: Mike Hewitt/Getty Images

KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVE



“Is it true that the apple tree which assisted Newton’s discovery of gravity was situated in what is now Ipswich Town’s car park?” asked Aidan Rush in 2002. “I’m sure I saw this on a television programme once but of course no one believes me.”

It’s a nice legend, Aidan, but it’s not correct. As Dennis O’Neill pointed out: “The actual apple tree, or to be exact its stump, remains in the garden of Woolsthorpe Manor, Newton’s home just south of Grantham. It lived for a couple of hundred years, but was apparently blown down by high winds a few decades ago,” he added. “What remains is still there.”

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

CAN YOU HELP?



“On hearing about Leicester fans and their seismic goal celebrations, I got to wondering if there had been other reports of football causing earthquakes,” wonders Justin Cavendish.

“In Liverpool’s 3-0 win over Manchester City last week, the three goalscorers (Lallana, Milner and Firmino) were also the three ‘assisters’,” emails Hijaaz Peerbocucs. “Surely this is the first time that this has happened in the Premier League with three or more players?”

“I’m looking for Zizous and Jürgen Kohlers – ie, players who were sent off in their final game before retirement,” tweets Nils Henrik Smith.

“Which player has scored on more than one of their birthdays?” asks Simon Cook.

“Crystal Palace have not won any of their last 12 games,” writes Jeremy Nash. “What’s the longest winless run of a team that has survived in a top flight?”

“One I’ve long thought about since hearing the commentator introduce the fact: in the final Edinburgh Derby of last season (Hibs v Hearts, Easter Road, Sunday 12 April), of the 22 starting players, 21 had scored a league goal that season, only Hearts goalkeeper Neil Alexander failing to register,” muses Rob Mackie. “All of the four subs had goals to their names too, making 25 of the 26 players goalscorers in the 2014-15 season. Can anyone think of a game where either all 22 starters had scored, or even a game where more than 25 players featured who had also registered a league goal that season?”

“In the European Cup in 1961-62, Tottenham Hotspur were losing 4-0 in the first leg against Gornik Zabrze,” notes Paul Wolf-Light. “They subsequently scored two to make it 4-2 on the night, and then won the second leg 8-1. Has any team managed a greater or similar turnaround from 0-4 to 10-5 in European competition? If not, what is the next best?”



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