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Steve Claridge in his motor at Millwall, from 2002.
Steve Claridge in his motor at Millwall, from 2002. Photograph: Frank Baron for the Guardian
Steve Claridge in his motor at Millwall, from 2002. Photograph: Frank Baron for the Guardian

Which footballers have played for the most teams in one division?

This article is more than 7 years old

Plus: national team record scorers at the same club, pointless teams at international tournaments and more on England’s BBC v ITV records. Mail your questions and answers to knowledge@theguardian.com or tweet @TheKnowledge_GU

“Nomadic Australian goalkeeper Liam Reddy signed for Perth Glory last week,” begins Phil Withall. “They will be the seventh A-League side he has played for following stints at Newcastle Jets, Brisbane Roar, Wellington Phoenix, Sydney FC, Central Coast Mariners and Western Sydney Wanderers. I’m fairly sure that playing for 70% of teams in one (major) league is a record but has any player appeared for more sides in the same division?”

Luckily, Jack Cummins is omniscient on all things like this. “I may not be the first to suggest him, but Marcus Bent played for eight different sides in the Premier League (Crystal Palace, Blackburn, Ipswich, Leicester, Everton, Charlton, Wigan and Wolves),” he writes, before running off for a breather. Anyway, “on top of this, he also turned out for nine teams in the Championship (Crystal Palace, Port Vale, Sheffield United, Blackburn, Ipswich, Charlton, Birmingham, Middlesbrough and QPR). Another to have turned out for eight teams in the same division is – maybe somewhat unsurprisingly – Steve Claridge, who played for Bournemouth, Cambridge, Birmingham, Millwall, Brentford, Gillingham, Bradford and Walsall in the equivalent of League One.”

The fun does not stop lower down the football pyramid either. “Guy Branston and Drewe Broughton have both played for a whopping 12 different teams in League Two,” he adds, before immersing himself deeper into the Football League archives. “Ade Akinbyi has been on the team sheet for seven Championship clubs, and an honourable mention must go to ex-Leicester City forward Frank Worthington, who turned out for seven top-tier teams.” On a side note, Adebayo Akinfenwa, who is yet to activate Beast Mode for the coming season, can match Reddy’s A-League feat, adds Jack. “He will match that achievement this coming season should he sign for another League One or League Two side, having played for six already in each.”

In Ireland, Philip Hughes has played for six second-tier clubs, along with four others in the top flight. On top of that he has had three spells at Shelbourne, was at Kildare County on another three separate occasions, Monaghan and St Patrick’s twice, along with four other non-league teams. In total he has changed clubs 19 times – and four no longer exist.

Two’s company, three’s a crowd

“Manchester United’s signings of Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Henrikh Mkhitaryan mean they’ll have three players in their squad who are the all-time leading goalscorers for their country (Ibrahimovic for Sweden, Mkhitaryan for Armenia and Wayne Rooney for England),” writes Pat Bulford. “Has this ever happened at another club? Or, indeed, can another club top it?”

Ibrahimovic is unlikely to be best pleased at having to share such a stage at Old Trafford. The Swede is top of the pile with 62, Rooney has 50, and Mkhitaryan a meagre 19. He is well versed on these kinds of records though, from his time in La Liga. Here’s Steve Hyde: “As you might expect, Barcelona seem to be frontrunners in this department,” he begins. “Their 2008-09 squad contained France’s Thierry Henry, Cameroon’s Samuel Eto’o, Iceland’s Eidur Gudjohnsen and Mali’s Seydou Keita, who were, and still are, their countries’ leading international goalscorers. A chap named Lionel Messi was also in the squad – he wasn’t the record holder at the time, but has since gone on to a moderate amount of international success. Ibrahimovic joined the following season and David Villa the season after that, but the departures of Gudjohnsen and Henry meant they never exceeded more than four at once.”

Top marks

“Has there ever been a major tournament in which every team that qualified for the group stages earned at least a single point?” wonders Ignatius J Reilly.

The 1958 World Cup, where a certain Pelé made his debut for Brazil. Butthere’s more to it than that. “Argentina had two points; Scotland, Mexico and Austria had one. No edition has managed this since tournament expansions to 24 teams (1982-1994) or 32 teams (from 1998),” Vincent Lacey says, before providing the following impressive, lengthy breakdown.

It was, of course, impossible in the European Championship before 1980 as there was no group stage but in 1980 Greece and Spain got one point to finish bottom of their respective groups, with the Greeks getting their sole point in the final game by holding eventual winners West Germany to a 0-0 draw. At Euro 1992 Scotland were closest to finishing on zero, but beat the Commonwealth of Independent States 3-0 in the final group match. There has been at least one nil-point team since the tournament expanded to 16 teams (1996-2012) and there was one at Euro 2016.

Step forward, Ukraine. Photograph: Bertrand Langlois/AFP/Getty Images

In the Copa América, from 1916 to 1967, the final tournament was known as the Campeonato Sudamericano de Fútbol (South American Championship) and consisted of a single round robin league, with all competitors playing each other once and the top team winning the championship. The number of entries fluctuated as teams entered and withdrew from edition to edition. In addition, there were two tournaments in 1959, the first in Argentina (with seven competitors), the second in Ecuador (five entries).

Editions where every team earned at least one point were: 1916, 1920, 1921 (only four entrants); 1922, 1959(B) (five teams); 1937, 1956, 1967 (six teams); 1945, 1953, 1957, 1959(A), 1963 (seven teams); and 1947, 1949 (eight teams)

When it changed to the Copa América from 1975 to 1987, nine teams played in groups of three, with the group winners joining the previous edition’s winners in the two-legged semi-finals. Every team earned at least a draw in 1979 and 1983. The format changed to two groups of five in 1989, with everyone getting points that year. The format as we know it now (12 teams divided into three groups of four) launched in 1993. Everyone participating got at least one point that year, a feat which hasn’t been repeated since.

England’s results on BBC/ITV (2)

Further to last week’s revealing numbers as to how England fare on the box, Phil Sutcliffe is adamant there’s more to it than Alan Shearer’s dulcet BBC tones or Ian Wright’s dodgy gear.He’s even made a bulging spreadsheet.

“Looking at the fixtures and results since Italia ‘90, the issue seems to be that ITV get more group games (now 19 out of 22 they’ve shown), when the result isn’t necessarily crucial to progress,” he mutters. “Before last Monday, ITV had a better record than the BBC for knockout games (they had only shown two before the Iceland match – Belgium ‘90, Argentina ‘98, so 50-50 v the BBC’s 33% wins (two out of six). The Iceland loss means their record (in percentage terms) are identical. While the stats show wins are ‘more likely’ on BBC, even including Monday’s match, ITV have fewer losses (six) in matches they’ve exclusively shown than the BBC (seven). So while I completely (and irrationally) agree with the sentiment of the piece, the stats aren’t as conclusive as made out. Sadly.”

Knowledge archive

Who are the lowest seeded teams to qualify for a major international championship?” mused Ryan Geraghty at the end of last year. “And what were their qualifying groups like?”

Iceland, Northern Ireland and Albania exceeded all expectations at Euro 2016, after all three qualified from the fifth seeding pot despite history not looking too favourable. Iceland and Northern Ireland trumped all previous records of tournament minnows though, both advancing from the group stages, with Iceland reaching the quarter-finals in the expanded 24-team tournament. Northern Ireland eventually succumbed to Wales, themselves seeded in the fourth pot, in the round of 16. The European Championships twice before welcomed fifth seeds prior to this summer’s competition in France. Both examples were first-time qualifiers, Slovenia in 2000 and, surprisingly, Turkey in 1996. Neither made it past the group stages, though. More recently in the World Cup, Slovenia qualified from the fifth pot to reach Brazil in 2010 but Robert Koren’s winner over Algeria was not enough to see them make it into the second round.

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

Can you help?

“What is the worst start a team has made to a penalty shootout yet still ending up winning?” asks Mark Harris. [Wolves v Sheffield Wednesday, Kevin Pressman and all in 1995. There’s a starter point for you – Knowledge Ed.]

“Just been looking back at 1958 to see how Wales progressed to the quarter-final of that World Cup,” writes Jez Orbell. “To say they had a sprinkling of good fortune is to put it mildly. To be clear this is not a bitter England fan but someone intrigued as to the most unlikely progression of a club or country in a competition. How many withdrawals, play-offs or obscure goal average advances has a team benefitted from and what is the furthest in the competition that they went? The ultimate beneficiary would have to be Denmark at Euro 1992 but what other notable examples are there?”

“Which international football manager has won the most games while in charge of matches against their own country?” wonders Scott Sumner.

Here’s Joe Ward:Recalling the time Ronnie Moore spent a post-game under the impression he was off to Ipswich Town and waving goodbye to the fans at Tranmere (only to not get the job), I found out that he was fired from his managerial tenure at Oldham because, and to quote then-Oldham MD Simon Corney, ‘season ticket sales have been very slow’. I was wondering, have there been many other examples of firings that were explained on a financial basis and not the usual threat of relegation or poor form?”

Send your questions and answers to knowledge@theguardian.com or get in touch via Twitter @TheKnowledge_GU

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