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“In terms of aggregate league position, will Tottenham v Manchester United be the worst European final ever?” asks Phil Taylor (and dozens of others).
Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United, who meet in Bilbao tonight, put all their eggs in the Europa League basket sometime before the clocks went back. They are 17th and 16th in the Premier League respectively, giving them an aggregate position of 33. It is, to take a couple of unashamedly gratuitous examples, equivalent to Oldham Athletic playing Southampton in the Uefa Cup final of 1992, or Sabadell meeting Racing Santander in the same competition in 1987.
We’ve been through every European final – except, for obvious reasons, the Intertoto Cup – and can confirm that, by this fairly meaningless if nerdily interesting measure, the Bilbao game is by some distance the worst of the 180 European finals that will have been played by the end of the season. The aggregate league position of 33 is 10 ahead of the next worst, shared by two finals from Before 1992.
The epic 1988 Uefa Cup final between Bayer Leverkusen and Espanyol (both teams won 3-0 at home, Leverkusen prevailed on penalties) involved teams that finished eighth in the Bundesliga and 15th in La Liga. And the 1960 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup final between Birmingham City and Barcelona, played in March and May of that year, pitted the 19th-best team in England against the fourth-best in Spain. Barcelona won 4-1 on aggregate.
Here’s the list of the “worst” European finals based on aggregate league position.
20
Anderlecht (2) v West Ham (18) Cup Winners’ Cup 1975-76
Anderlecht won 4-2
21
Atlético Madrid (9) v Fulham (12) Europa League 2009-10
Atlético won 2-1
22
Fiorentina (8) v West Ham United (14) Conference League 2022-23
West Ham won 2-1
Birmingham City (17) v Roma (5) Fairs Cup 1960-61
Roma won 4-2 on aggregate
23
Birmingham City (19) v Barcelona (4) Fairs Cup 1958-60
Barcelona won 4-1 on aggregate
Espanyol (15) v Bayer Leverkusen (8) Uefa Cup 1988
Leverkusen won 3-2 on penalties after a 3-3 aggregate draw
33
Tottenham Hotspur (17) v Manchester United (16) Europa League 2024-25
Apart from this year’s final, league positions are taken at the end of the season in which the final was played. Two reasons. 1. Finding league positions on the day of the final would take for ever; and 2. League positions sometimes changed during two-legged finals – especially in the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, when the final was sometimes spread over several months and/or played at unusual times of the year.
The “worst” European Cup or Champions League final took place in 1975, when Bayern Munich (who finished 10th in the Bundesliga after a shambles of a post-World Cup season that could fill three volumes) beat Leeds (ninth in Division One) in a controversial final in Paris.
The worst (sic) of the Champions League era is shared between 1999-2000 (Real Madrid 3-0 Valencia, 5th v 3rd in La Liga) and 2011-12 (Chelsea, sixth in the Premier League, beat Bundesliga runners-up Bayern on penalties).
Even weirder player-of-the-match awards
In last week’s Knowledge we looked at unusual or downright weird player-of-the-match awards. You’ve been in touch with some more goalkeepers who had the dubious pleasure of being decorated in defeat.
A number of people mentioned Neville Southall’s astonishing performance in Eindhoven in 1996. Southall, aged 38, made 13 saves, many of them brilliant, yet Wales were smashed 7-1 by the Netherlands. We can’t find a contemporary account of him being the official player of the match – but the man himself remembers the award, and Jonny Owen and Elis James, two men who know infinitely more about Welsh football than us, have written the same.
Next up, the 1981 FA Cup final, when Spurs beat Manchester City 3-2 in a famous replay after a 1-1 draw. Ricky Villa was man of the match, the end, right? Nope. “The BBC decided to hold back on awarding their MOTM (it was a different, darker time) until after the replay,” begins David Moore. “On the basis of both games they awarded it to losing City goalkeeper Joe Corrigan, whose everything-for-the-cause performance had nearly all of us in tears.
“Even my mum, who had little time for football, felt bound to say he’d played his heart out. In his acceptance of the award, he gave one of the most gracious, complimentary of his opponents and dignified interviews I can remember.” A different time indeed.
Felipe Garcia has a story with a painfully obvious moral that appears to have gone unheeded. “The biggest TV channel in Brazil (Globo) used to have an online vote for the player of the match,” begins Felipe. “In 2019, the Vasco keeper Sidão made a few mistakes in a 3-0 defeat by Santos. He was then voted the player of the match.
“Unfortunately Globo forced a journalist to deliver the trophy to him as he exited the pitch. The video is very uncomfortable. Ultimately Sidão sued Globo and they had to pay for making a joke out of him.”
The above all refer to the choice of player being unusual for one reason or another. Let’s end with an actual award that was unusual. “Who can forget Conor Sammon and his look of delight upon receiving (checks notes … ) a pizza as his player-of-the-match award for Partick Thistle …?” says Adam Clark.
No shots, no problem (part two)
Last week we also looked at teams who have won games without having a shot on target. But we weren’t aware of an amusing tale from the Championship in 2016-17. “Norwich beat Brighton 2-0 at Carrow Road without having a shot on target,” writes Rob Wolf Petersen. “Both were own goals. Both came back off the frame of the goal before hitting the keeper David Stockdale and rebounding into the net. Even as a Brighton fan, I couldn’t help but laugh at the chants of ‘David Stockdale, he scores when he wants.’” There’s a laughing Stock line in there somewhere, but the poor guy has probably suffered enough.
Knowledge archive
“I seem to recall,” began Neal Butler in 2013, “that Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest once finished a league game with 10 men, when Cloughie not only used all his available subs, but also decided to take Steve Hodge off to give him a rest. Did this actually happen? And are there any more recent instances?
It was Monday 28 January 1991 and Nottingham Forest were taking on Crystal Palace in an FA Cup third-round replay at the City Ground.
The two clubs had drawn the first game 0-0 and Forest were 2-1 up in the first replay when a Roy Keane backpass led to John Salako chipping Mark Crossley from distance and Keane finding himself on the dressing room floor – Clough punched him in the face and said: “Never play the ball back to the goalkeeper.”
The third match was a much easier affair for Forest, who took an insurmountable lead with three goals in 11 second-half minutes. With six minutes to go, Steve Hodge saw his number up – even though Forest had used both their substitutions – and walked towards the touchline.
“Clough claimed at the time he was protecting Hodge’s calf,” wrote Jonathan Wilson in Nobody Says Thank You. “He later told Hodge, though, that it wasn’t intended as a slight against him, but that he hated Palace’s muscular approach and wanted to ‘take the piss’ out of them by playing with 10.
“It almost certainly was, though, at least in part a slight against Hodge, with whom Clough had a protracted battle over a new contract throughout the latter part of the season.” Hodge left Forest to join Leeds in the summer.
Can you help?
“My son is a goalkeeper and he wondered if there has ever been a professional goalkeeper in top-tier football who has worn No 10?” asks Dave Sturges.
“The new Eredivisie champions PSV were nine points behind Ajax with five games to play, only for Ajax to finish LDLDW while PSV won all their games. Has there ever been a more spectacular turnaround?” asks Rutger.
Dirk Maas has a sub-question: “PSV were nine points ahead of Ajax after 15 games, then nine points behind after 27 before eventually winning the title. Has there ever been a more spectacular seesaw?”
“How many players have been relegated with their club in the same calendar year that they won an international trophy with their country, and who was the first?” asks Masai Graham.
“Watching Conor Coventry play for Charlton got me thinking about Jackie Charlton playing for Manchester United,” says Matthew. “Would it be possible to field a full squad made up of players whose names were also EFL teams?”
“Who were the first team in Europe’s big five league, men’s or women’s, to field a starting XI of players all born in the 21st century?” asks Chelsea.
