“Jay Dasilva got 63 under-age caps for England before playing for the Wales senior team. Has any player got more under-age caps for one country before they changed allegiance? And who amassed the most under-age caps without ever playing senior international football?” tweets Oscar Felix Ramirez.
At the age of 26, Dasilva made his international debut in June, playing for Wales in a friendly against Gibraltar. Before that, at least according to Wikipedia, he had represented England 63 times, most recently against Romania at the 2019 Under-21 Euros. Here’s the full breakdown:
Under-16 4 caps
Under-17 21
Under-18 4
Under-19 15
Under-20 6
Under-21 13
It’s good, but it’s not quite Blockbusters. “The player with the most youth caps before switching allegiance that I could find is Amine Gouiri,” writes Dewi Howells. “A product of the Lyon academy, Gouri was named, alongside Erling Haaland and Dominik Szoboszlai, as part of the Guardian’s Next Generation in 2017 and made the team of the tournament at that summer’s Under-17 European Championship. He won 72 youth caps and scored 51 goals for France, but last year he chose to switch allegiance to the country of his ancestry and has since made eight appearances for the Algerian senior side.
“Gouiri’s record could be broken by the German youth international Levin Öztunali. He made 75 appearances for Germany’s youth sides and, at 28, remains uncapped at senior level and eligible for his father’s homeland of Turkey. Although he dropped down to the 2. Bundesliga with Hamburg last season and would face stiff competition for a spot in the Turkish squad should he wish to change his allegiance at this point.
“As for the player with the most under-age caps without ever playing senior international football, that must be Tim Ward of the USA. Ward amassed 92 youth caps, and would likely have had more had he not missed the 2005 World Youth Championship through injury. Unfortunately, injury was almost certainly the reason he never won a senior cap. He was forced to retire at 24, making only three appearances in his final season for San Jose Earthquakes.
“A special mention for Lasse Vigen Christensen, who made 91 appearances for Denmark’s age-grade teams. While playing for Fulham he received a first call-up to the senior squad at 20. Having won 76 of his youth caps at that point he must have felt fairly confident that, despite not getting off the bench in a friendly against Montenegro, senior honours would follow before too long. Alas, a decade on he is still waiting and was even blocked by his club manager from going to the Rio Olympics despite appearing in a pre-tournament friendly.”
And a special thank you to Dewi for such a comprehensive answer.
Winless quintets this far into a season
“After six games of the Premier League season, five (!) teams are winless,” noted Bob Zoellner last week (it’s now four after seven). “Has that happened before? And has any winless team (excluding the first couple of weeks) been higher in the league than Ipswich, who currently sit in 15th place?”
Ipswich dropped to 17th after their heavy defeat at West Ham, though the questions still stand. And Chris Roe has the answers.
“Not only has this happened before, the most recent occurrence was only three years ago,” he writes. “Southampton, Leeds, Newcastle, Burnley and Norwich were all winless after six matches of the 2021-22 Premier League season. It has also happened four times in the Football League. There is only one example of six teams being winless after six games. That was in the old Division Two in 1988-89, when Crystal Palace, Sunderland, Shrewsbury, Chelsea, Stoke and Brighton all got off to slow starts.”
It’s worth noting that the fixtures were slightly staggered, so on the day that Sunderland, Shrewsbury, Stoke and Brighton failed to win their sixth league games of the season, Chelsea and Stoke got off the mark in their seventh matches. But they were all winless after six games. Not that it did Chelsea and Palace much harm: they were both promoted at the end of the season, with Chelsea romping to the title on 99 points. Their record for the last 40 league games was frankly ridiculous: P40 W29 D9 L2.
As for the second part of Bob’s question, Chris has unearthed the curious case of the winless mid-table team: “In 1976-77, as per this column on 25 September, Leicester drew their first six games. They sat in 13th place out of 22.” Even with three points for a win rather than two, Leicester would have been 15th.
More bizarre ink
In last week’s Knowledge we looked at players with tattoos of other footballers – it would seem some also have ones of themselves …
“Shamrock Rovers midfielder Richie Towell is worth a shout out here,” reckons Sean DeLoughry. “He has a tattoo on his leg of himself scoring the winner in the 2015 FAI Cup final for Rovers’ bitter rivals Dundalk. He may be the first player to be booked for over-celebrating a goal scored against a team he has permanently inked on himself.”
And then there’s also Leroy Sané, as Liz Tray posted:
Leroy Sane also has a tattoo of himself, in which he's scoring a goal. Anyone else guilty of that level of narcissism?
— Liz Tray (@LizTray) October 2, 2024
Knowledge archive
“Wigan scored seven in the first half against Hull last week. Is this a record in a professional domestic league game?” asked George Jones in 2020.
Wigan’s extraordinary romp had everyone scrambling round the memory bank and/or the nearest Rothmans. The ambiguity of the above question meant a few of you sent in examples of crazy scoring in the second half of games, so let’s deal with those first.
“Brighton beat Walsall 7-0 in 1976, having been goalless at half-time,” noted Roger Kay. “Peter Ward got four and Ian ‘Spider’ Mellor three. It was a little ironic as we’d been royally whupped by Walsall 6-0 only two years previously.”
Radu Ogrezeanu-Ghica saw Brighton’s performance and raised it: he highlighted Dortmund’s 11-1 Bundesliga shellacking of Arminia Bielefeld in 1982. It was 1-1 at half-time before Dortmund edged to victory with 10 unanswered goals in the second half.
Matches are more likely to open up after half-time, so to win the first half 7-0 is even less likely. Wigan were not the first team to achieve this magnificent feat, however. Huw Richards and Graeme Atkinson pointed out that Newcastle led Newport 7-0 at half-time of their Division Two game in 1946-47, eventually going on to win 13-0. “Tranmere led Oldham 8-1 at the break on Boxing Day 1935,” added Graham, “and went on to win 13-4 with Bunny Bell famously grabbing nine (and missing a penalty!).”
There was one more for the list. “On 10 January 1970 Bury beat Tranmere Rovers 8-0,” wrote Norman Shuttleworth. “At the time we were playing in an amateur match directly across Manchester Road from the ground. Our second half coincided with the start of the league match. We struggled to count the roars coming out of Gigg Lane, but the general consensus was seven. After our game finished, we snuck in after half-time in anticipation of double figures, only to view a single goal. Can’t remember the result of our match.”
While it was not a league game, this Knowledge favourite saw Australia 16-0 up at half-time against American Samoa. And in terms of most goals in a half, well …
@TheKnowledge_GU Arbroath 36–0 Bon Accord 12 September 1885
— Pickles U Fat Get (@torysmasher) July 22, 2020
Arbroath were 15–0 up by half time, & scored another 21 goals in the second half. The Scottish Athletic Journal at the time wrote The leather was landed between the posts 41 times, but five of the times were disallowed.
Can you help?
“Brentford scoring three goals in the first minute in three consecutive games – is this a record for consecutive early goals?” wonders Dean Whearty.
“Last week my team, Bangor FC, defeated Warrenpoint Point 4-0 in the Northern Ireland Football League Cup. The second goal was scored by Sonny Redford, 18, and the fourth by the evergreen Michael Halliday, 45. Has there ever been a bigger or comparable age gap between goalscorers?” asks Andy Martin.
When Celtic and Aberdeen meet on Saturday week, both will have 100% records going into the match, with seven wins from seven. Has there been a later occurrence in a season of two teams with 100% records meeting?
— Mike (@themikeslattery) October 8, 2024
“Until last weekend, Wycombe Wanderers had played eight games in League One and scored two goals in each game. Was this a record?” ask David Southworth, David Martin and others.
David Shannon: “I noticed that Ekenäs IF (EIF), who appeared in Finland’s top flight this year, have only two seasons in the division: 1933 and 2024. This is a gap of 90 years between appearances. Is this a record gap?”
“As a Portsmouth fan it pains me to ask, have there ever been five goals conceded without reply in fewer than the 13 minutes it took us to achieve it against Stoke last week?” sighs Eddy Reynolds.
Mail us your questions or tweet @TheKnowledge_GU
