“Which club team has had the most international captains playing together at one time?” asks MH Zahid. “Conversely, which international team has had the most club captains in its starting lineup at one time?”

A quick web search finds a fuss being made in various corners of the internet of Chelsea’s 2009-10 squad because it contained six national team captains in Michael Ballack (Germany), Petr Cech (Czech Republic), Didier Drogba (Côte d’Ivoire), Branislav Ivanovic (Serbia), Mikel John Obi (Nigeria) and John Terry (England). These are, indeed, six people who captained their countries, playing together at one time, but crucially they were not all international captains at that time, which because we like to have our hands bound as tight as possible – no questions please – mean they are disqualified from this particular tournament. Ivanovic, you see, was not named Serbia captain until 2012 and Mikel, who was but a whippersnapper at 22 when the 2009-10 season started, was still seven years from getting his hands on the Nigeria armband.

But if that Chelsea team are not themselves the best answer that Knowledge has come up with, they are at least associated with them, having been knocked out of the Champions League by José Mourinho’s captain-strewn Inter. Inter ended up beating Bayern Munich 2-0 in the final, with a team that included the then full-time captains of Brazil (Lúcio), Romania (Cristian Chivu), Cameroon (Samuel Eto’o) and Macedonia (Goran Pandev), while the captain of Serbia (Dejan Stankovic) came off the bench to replace Chivu in the second half and Pandev was replaced by Sulley Muntari, who while not Ghana’s full-time captain had led the side in their most recent game, a 2-1 defeat at Bosnia and Herzegovina that March.

But that’s not all! Among the unused substitutes was Iván Córdoba, who at this point in his career had lost Colombia’s armband to Mario Yepes but been given it back for their previous game, against Paraguay, in the absence of his fellow centre-back. Also in the team and worthy of note, if not of inclusion in our tally of then captains, were Wesley Sneijder, occasional Netherlands skipper and still their all-time record appearance maker, and Javier Zanetti, who regularly captained Argentina and is No 4 on their list of all-time appearance makers (he would be higher had he not been frozen out by their then manager, Diego Maradona, before the 2010 World Cup), with occasional Kenya captain McDonald Mariga also among the subs.

By our count that’s seven players in one matchday squad who could boast of being their country’s current captain at kick-off, and none of whom captained their club side – that honour went to Zanetti. Our searches have not found another team to match that one, but readers have suggested a couple who came close, in the shape of Tottenham in 2020-21 (who boasted five international captains at the time in Hugo Lloris of France; Serge Aurier of Côte d’Ivoire; South Korea’s Son Heung-min; Gareth Bale of Wales; and England’s own Harry Kane, suggested by John Curry) and Liverpool just last year, when in Conor Bradley, Andy Robertson, Virgil van Dijk, Wataru Endo, Mo Salah and Dominik Szoboszlai they had six – though they never played together while they were all incumbent international captains. Any more for any more?

The fastest former footballer we found in time for last week’s instalment was Alexei Smertin, the former Russia and Chelsea midfielder, who screamed around the Kazan Marathon course in 2020 in just two hours, 48 minutes and 17 seconds. But as Richard Askham emailed to point out, that has since been bettered by Joe Skarz, formerly of Bury, Rotherham and Oxford United, and current manager of Golcar United of the Northern Counties East League Premier Division, who in 2025 finished the Yorkshire Marathon with a chip time of 2hr 47min 33sec.

The next question is what level of football do you need to reach to qualify as a footballer? Because Stig Lindmark tipped us off about the former AIK academy player Andreas Almgren, whose dreams of football glory were derailed by injury in his teens and eventually shifted his focus towards distance running. In New York at the start of this month – while the retired cyclist Tom Dumoulin was putting most former footballers to shame with a time of 2:27:12 – he ran his first ever marathon and only went and won the thing, in 2hr 6min 1sec. With no senior competitive appearances he probably does not count, but it’s a good enough effort to get a mention.

Heads up

“Has a headed goal ever been awarded goal of the season,” wonders Rupert Sheard. “I can think of a few belters, but awards tend to go to ones kicked in.”

“The closest I could get was Robin van Persie’s flying header at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, for the Netherlands against Spain,” writes Sinan Eccles. “He was pipped to the official goal of the tournament by James Rodríguez’s iconic volley, but did make it to third in that year’s Puskas Award – behind Rodríguez and Stephanie Roche.”

Peter Tomlin writes: “Having researched the goal of the season awards in many countries, the only header I could find that won was Keith Houchen’s fantastic one in the 1986-87 FA Cup Final for Coventry v Tottenham. However, Alisson’s dramatic 95th-minute headed winner v West Brom was voted Liverpool’s goal of the season for the 2020-21 season.”

And Mark Johnson points out that Basile Boli’s ridiculous bullet header for Marseille against PSG at the end of the 1993 season would surely have won the Ligue 1 goal of the season award but for the inconvenient fact that no such award existed at the time.

Surf’s up (2)

Martyn Amos has responded to last week’s scepticism about the possibility of an Ipswich fan website existing in 1990, the year before the first known website went online. “Just to clarify, the original page was set up by Phil Clarke, who was working at BT Labs in Martlesham (near Ipswich), in 1990,” he writes. “At the time, as I said, the web was still experimental, and I think the page was only available internally. Your correspondent is correct in saying that the first public website appeared in August 1991. But the ITFC page still existed, in some recognisable form, using the standard web technology, in 1990, so I think it counts. That’s my understanding, anyway.”

Knowledge archive

With Lee Power taking charge of Swindon Town, in last week’s Knowledge archive we dug up our piece from 2006 on chairs acting as managers, we wrote in October 2015. Neil Bellis, the director of communications at Chester FC, writes to point out we missed Terry Smith off our list.

“He took over four games into the season despite not really knowing much about ‘soccer’,” writes Neil. “He was a former American Football coach but for some reason ending up buying our club. Not only did we end up getting relegated from the Football League for the first time in 1999-2000 we also saw a few very strange ideas from him including having a team talk as the Lord’s prayer and appointing a captain in defence, midfield and attack. Thankfully we are now fan owned so this level of insanity shouldn’t happen again.”

One of Smith’s first games as manager was against Aston Villa in the League Cup, a fixture that prompted a visit from ITV to see what was going on. The result of that visit can be seen here:

“There’s nothing magical about being a coach,’ said Smith not long after his arrival. “It’s like being the general manager of a business, the coaching principles are the same in any sport.” That doesn’t sound too promising but things didn’t really go horribly wrong until the end of November, when Chester began a run of 11 defeats in 12 matches. There’s some footage here of the aftermath of the 5-1 home defeat by Leyton Orient just after Christmas – “I want to thank you guys,” says Smith in the dressing room. “That’s the most pitiful, pitiful effort I’ve ever damn seen.”

Smith stepped down as manager and brought in Ian Atkins in January 2000, then sold the club in October 2001.

Can you help?

“What’s the highest score by a team or in a match where no player scored more than one goal?” writes Paul Gage.

“Manchester United have 20 league titles, won by three managers. Liverpool have 20 league titles won by 10. Which teams have the most and fewest titles won by the most and fewest managers?” asks Will Marquand.

“Djed Spence (shirt No 99) set up Pio Esposito (No 94) in Inter’s 2-0 win over Como at the weekend. Has there ever been a combination for a goal (assist and scorer) with a higher combined shirt number than 193?” writes Joe Strawson.

“Did the Fenerbahce side have more combined Premier League appearances than Liverpool in the teams’ recent Champions League match? If so was this the first instance of a club in Europe playing opposition who had more game appearances in their own league than they had themselves?” ponders Josh Wolff-Martin.