The football fans who travelled to the wrong countries for matches

“Has there ever been a case of a team travelling to the wrong country by mistake, Slovenia instead of Slovakia for example?” tweets Stephen Dinsdale.

In 2019, the former snooker world champion Neil Robertson had to forfeit a game after driving to the wrong Barnsley. So far, we haven’t been able to find any football teams who have made a similar mistake, whether travelling domestically or internationally. Football fans, on the other hand, aren’t always known for their clear-headedness, and there are plenty of stories of away supporters who weren’t particularly satnav savvy.

Martin Davies is first up with the story of a group of Belgium fans who travelled to watch their team play Wales in a Euro 2016 qualifier. They cheerfully typed “Wales” into their satnav, with hilarious consequences: the group ended in a village of the same name near Rotherham, about 200 miles away from the Cardiff City Stadium. They still had time to make the game, though maybe they wished they hadn’t – Belgium lost 1-0.

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It’s not always so easy to make the match when you go to the wrong place, even if you’re in the right country. “In 1985, a plane-full of fans went to the wrong city for a vital World Cup qualifying match between Canada and Honduras,” writes Don Richardson. “The match, which decided who would qualify for Mexico 86, was to be played in St John’s, capital of the Province of Newfoundland.

“Unfortunately, some of the Honduran fans booked tickets to the wrong city and wound up in Saint John, New Brunswick – similar name but different spelling, and several hundred kilometres from where the game was to be played. After fruitless efforts to find the stadium, the luckless fans were taken in by a local tavern owner, who arranged for them to watch the match on TV. Canada went on to win and reach the World Cup for the first time. Here’s a story that references this mix-up.”

In 2019, a couple of Liverpool supporters travelled to Ghent rather than Genk in Belgium, missing their team’s 4-1 win as a result. Earlier the same year, a few Benfica fans travelled diligently to the wrong Frankfurt for a Europa League quarter-final, even proudly taking photos upon arrival at the incorrect destination.

In 2013, Bosnia and Herzegovina were on the brink of history. If they won their final qualifier away to Lithuania, they would reach the World Cup for the first time. Haris Tresnjo and his friends decided it was an occasion they could not miss. Alas, they jumbled up the letters in the middle of their destination and ended up in Latvia. A strange mistake at the best of times, even more so because Bosnia had already been to Latvia in a qualification match a few months earlier. “A younger guy … explained that we are in the wrong country, and that the match is not being played in Latvia, but in Lithuania,” said Haris. “We wandered a bit more through the capital, just to make sure. I will surely remember this stupidity for the rest of my life.” There was a happy ending of sorts: the group found a cafe showing the game, and Bosnia and Herzegovina did the necessary with a 1-0 win.

Finally, during Euro 2021, six French supporters travelled to Bucharest (Romania) instead of Budapest (Hungary, about 515 miles away) in the hope of watching their team. They missed an entertaining 1-1 draw, though not half as entertaining as the story they’ll have for their grandchildren.

Footballer diss tracks (2)

In last week’s Knowledge, we looked at players, managers and teams who have been the subject of diss tracks. And inevitably – please don’t diss us – we missed a few …

Let’s start with the title track from one of the more ubiquitous albums of the 1990s. “When Bobby Gould was manager of Wales,” begins Dan Barwick, “Manic Street Preachers used to change the live lyrics to their song Everything Must Go to Bobby Gould Must Go …”

In 1978, Scotland were the only British team to qualify for the World Cup and Andy Cameron couldn’t resist a peedie dig. “Surely the first ever diss song was Ally’s Tartan Army, the Scotland song for the 1978 World Cup,” writes Graeme Stockton. “He dissed the whole England team with the lyric: ‘We’re representing Britain and we’ve got to do or die / For England cannae dae it ‘cause they didnae qualify.’

Finally, a playful, if unsparing, back and forth between old friends. “I was surprised to see that nobody else mentioned two footballers dissing each other face to face,” notes Tom Bailey. If you’re being picky, it’s more of a battle than a diss track, but Bradley Wright-Phillips v Yannick Bolasie is a thing to behold.”

Double hat-tricks

Kylian Mbappé’s quintuple came in the Coupe de France against Pays de Cassel, so we’ll assume Londo’s question includes cup games played in the five leagues that are generally recognised as Europe’s biggest: England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

On that basis, we think the most recent instance of somebody scoring six goals was in 2004, when underrated slabhead Carsten Jancker had a day out away to fifth-tier FC Schönberg 95 in the first round of the DFB-Pokal. All six came in the second half, when Kaiserslautern took a comfortable 3-0 lead and quintupled it.

The last time it happened in a league game was also in Germany. Dieter Müller – he of the hat-trick on international debut as substitute in a European Championship semi-final– hit six in FC Köln’s 7-2 win over Werder Bremen at the start of the 1977-78 season. The mythical quality of the achievement is enhanced by the fact it can’t be found on YouTube, because the TV camera crew were on strike that day. It was the third game of a memorable, title-winning campaign in which Köln scored an eye-watering 58 goals in 17 home games. Müller hit 24 in total, ending as joint top-scorer with a more famous namesake, Gerd.

We think the last player to score six in an English top-flight game was Mr Hat-Trick himself, Geoff Hurst, when West Ham beat Sunderland 8-0 in October 1968. George Best famously put six past Northampton in the FA Cup 16 months later.

The Eredivisie isn’t considered one of Europe’s big five leagues, but it’s probably worth mentioning that future Middlesbrough striker Afonso Alves scored S-E-V-E-N for Heerenveen in their 9-0 win over Heracles in 2007-08. And there’s always the inevitable own-goal-shaped elephant in the room.

Knowledge archive

“What’s the most number of times that a team has hit the woodwork in the same game?” asked Ally McPhail in 2018.

Let’s start by looking at a couple of examples of teams who hit the woodwork multiple times in the same attack. Earlier in that 2017-18 season Duisburg whacked wood four times in a few seconds against Fortuna Düsseldorf, and Brazil did so three times during the foreplay to Roberto Dinamite’s goal against Poland at the 1978 World Cup.

As for multiple woodwork-rattling across a whole match, the first game that comes to mind is from Euro 96. The Czech Republic drew 3-3 with Russia, a result that put them through to the quarter-finals ahead of Italy, and also hit the woodwork four times from a variety of angles and distances.

At least they got the result they needed – as did Chelsea in the 2010 FA Cup final, when they hit the woodwork five times in a goalless first half against Portsmouth. They eventually won the match 1-0 and did the double.

Back when they were still a comedy club, Manchester City battered Bolton at the Etihad Stadium at the start of the 2005-06 season. They hit the woodwork five times, and then lost 1-0 to an injury-time penalty from Gary Speed.

That tale of woe was topped in Nuremberg in 2012, when Germany beat Kazakhstan 4-1 in a World Cup qualifier – and hit the woodwork six times. The same happened in the Southern League West in January, when Evesham United were repeatedly denied during a 2-1 defeat at Yate Town.

Can you help?

“Luis Suárez recently scored a hat-trick in his first game for Gremio aged 35. Who is the oldest player to score a debut hat-trick?” asks Masai Graham.

“Bob Shankly, brother of Bill, not only won the Scottish title with Dundee but also led them to within a match of the European Cup final in 1963, losing to Milan in the semi despite winning the home leg. Which is the most successful pair of managerial siblings?” wonders Stephen Toal.

Mail us your questions or tweet @TheKnowledge_GU.