“Spurs finished 17th this season, yet claimed a place in the Champions League. They aren’t the lowest-ranked Uefa qualifier, though, as I recall Millwall playing in Europe in the early 2000s. Which other English second-tier teams have played in Uefa European competitions?”asks Richard Amos.
We looked at thisback in the 2011-12 seasonas Birmingham entered the Europa League by virtue of winning that year’s League Cup. They exited in the group stage, behind Club Brugge and Portugal’s Braga (the latter beaten finalists the previous year), despite reaching the magical 10 points total.
That followed in the tradition set by West Ham’s 1980 FA Cup winners – Trevor Brooking’s rare header and all - and their journey to the quarter-final of the 1980-81 Cup Winners’ Cup. There they met a legendary Dinamo Tbilisi team, who went on to win the competition, the only Georgian club to win a European trophy (though they played in the old Soviet Union) anda team that had demolished Liverpoolin the 1979-80 European Cup. West Ham lost 4-2 on aggregate, including a 4-1 home loss that has time-honoured Hammers gasping at the memory.
On to the 21st century, where Ipswich qualified for the 2002-03 Uefa Cup despite being relegated from the Premiership (as it was known) in 2001-02. They qualified for Europe through Uefa’s Fair Play League after all of the English teams above them in the Fair Play League qualified for other European competitions. George Burley had taken Ipswich into the Uefa Cup in the the previous season but he was sacked in October 2002 as the Championship promotion campaign went downhill quickly, to be replaced by Joe Royle. One of Royle’s first assignments was a second-round meeting with Slovan Liberec, which they lost on penalties after a 1-1 draw.
Millwall’s sole portion of continental football came after they lost the 2004 FA Cup final to Manchester United, who had qualified for the Champions League. Dennis Wise’s Lions only got as far as a 4-2 first-round knockout loss to Ferencvaros.
The 2013 winners of the FA Cup, Wigan Athletic, were unable to prevent relegation, and so, Roberto Martínez having departed to Everton, Owen Coyle and, soon enough, Uwe Rösler presided over a Europa League stage in which the Latics finished bottom behind Belgium’s Zulte Waregem, Maribor and the Russian team Rubin Kazan.
To delve yet further into the murky depths of Knowledge favourite the Intertoto Cup, Crystal Palace, relegated after a campaign that included the co-management of Tomas Brolin and Attilio Lombardo, found themselves playing Samsunspor of Turkey over two legs and losing 2-0 both home and away, during Terry Venables’ ill-starred return to Selhurst Park in 1998.
“Newcastle’s third kit features adifferent club badgefrom the home and away kits, which means when they wear it the goalkeeper has a different badge on their shirt. Are there any other instances of this?”asks Andy Foreman-Lonn.
Liverpool are coming to the end of their kit sponsorship with Nike, a deal which runs until 31 July 2025. In something of a marketing faux pas, the club will have to play their first pre-season games in last season’s Nike kit, but it also means their new signings have had to beunveiled in Nike gear. Nobody knows for sure the new Adidas designs for next year – they can’t be released until 1 August – but unconfirmed leaked images suggest that three different badges will adorn the three new Adidas kits: a simple white Liver bird on the red home kit under LFC (similar to the Nike kit), a white bird encased in a red shielded crest on the away kit and a white bird on a more elaborate crest on the sea green third kit, a nod to both the third kits and crests in the 1990s. The new goalkeeper kits only carry the badges that are found on the new home shirts (if the leaks are to be believed), which means that when Liverpool play in their away or third kit next season, Alisson Becker will be wearing a different badge to Virgil van Dijk and co.
“My club [West Ham] had a kit in 2016-17 to celebrate the club’s original origins as ‘Thames Ironworks FC’,” emails Jack Hart. “The badge, rather than being our traditional crossed hammers, wasa Union flag with TIWFC embossed. The goalkeeper kit used with it had the new badge that we adopted that year for our move to Stratford. Additionally, I know we barely used the kit; I believe the intention was to use it during our cup games, but I think the FA had/has a rule regarding no kits having flags on them.”
“No doubt this won’t be the earliest example you get supplied with but Barnsley’s third kit from the 23-24 season featured a different badge to both the home and away kit and all the keeper shirts,” replies John Pearson. “They continued the trend with the 24-25 third kit which featured a different version of the badge used on the 23-24 kit.”
“It’s exceedingly rare for European clubs to play competitive football in mid-June, as they are now at the Club World Cup,”notes George Jones. “I would imagine up until the Covid-affected 2019-20 season (which went into July), there were dates on the calendar on which European club football had never been played. Can anyone come up with one?”
“Even if you only look at the ‘top five’ nations and the Champions League, until the early 2000s, national cup finals in Spain, Italy, Germany, and France were very often held in mid-to-late June, except for years where the national team was playing in the World Cup or European Championship that summer,” writes Ben. “And until 2024, the first knockout round of the Champions League qualifying, for teams from the four lowest-ranked leagues, was held at the very end of June. So no, it’s not rare at all!
“In regards to the question, there is no date like that – every day of June as well as the start of July has featured matches in one of those four national cups, and every other day of July has featured matches in the Uefa qualifying rounds.”
“Re: your question regarding a larger goal-difference disparity between two teams next to each other in the final standings (last week’s Knowledge), your list excluded Heart of Midlothian in 1957-58,” George Forsyth correctly points out. “Hearts were runaway champions, with 62 points, out of a possible total 68, scored 132 goals and let in 29, for a goal difference of 103. Second-placed Rangers, had a goal difference of a mere +40, resulting in a chasm of 63 goals.”
“At the end of 1997-98 season, Doncaster Rovers were relegated from the Football League after just four wins from their 46 games,” replies Mike Slattery. “Their goal difference of -83 was 55 worse than that of Brighton immediately above them, on -28. The largest gap was set 99 years earlier, in the days before goal difference was even a thing. During the 1898-99 season, which would be their final one in the Football League, Darwen conceded 141 goals in 34 games, with a goal difference of -119. Both of these remain league records to this day. That goal difference was a full 65 worse than that of Loughborough, one place above them, who ended on -54.”
Who was the first English player to play professionally abroad?This was a question askedby an unnamed reader back in March 2003.
The man you’re looking for, according to the brilliant statistical sitersssf.comis Herbert Kilpin, who played for FC Torinese in 1891, then for Mediolanum Milano from 1898 to 1900 and Milan from 1900-07. But Kilpin’s defining moment came in a Tuscan wine shop in 1899 when together with two friends he founded the Milan Cricket and Football Club, now known as the one and only [AC] Milan.
Paddy French asks: “Has a team won the Champions League without beating any reigning champions? And if not, which teams have beaten the fewest champions to win it? And which teams have beaten the most champions in winning the Champions League/European Cup?”
“After seeing thatJobe Bellingham had scored for Borussia Dortmundin their Club World Cup game against Mamelodi Sundowns, it occurred to me that his first competitive goal for his new club has come an awful long time before the start of his first domestic campaign with the team,” emails Alexander Craig. “Has there been a longer gap before?”
“Japan’s record defeat was a 15-2 home loss to the Philippines in 1917 and its record win was a 15-0 home victory against the Philippines in 1967,” writes Des H-B. “Are there any other national teams whose biggest win and most crushing loss come against the same opposition? And have any taken place closer together than the 50 years that span 1917-1967?”
“This past season Finnish striker Joel ‘Danger’ Pohjanpalo was the top goalscorer for the two teams he represented: Venezia in Serie A and Palermo in Serie B,” notes Ville Leino. “Has this feat been accomplished by any other players?”
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