“Last month, the Boston Red Sox catcher Danny Jansen played for both sides during a match against the Toronto Blue Jays. Has something like this ever happened in football?” tweets Dylan Hoekzema.
Jansen was playing for Toronto when their game against Boston was suspended in June. Boston then acquired him in July, with the match resuming in August, so he was an active participant for both sides in the same game.
Our intrepid gang of supernerds couldn’t find an exact equivalent, largely because of those pesky laws of the game, but Garry Brogden came closer than anyone with the tale of Jimmy Oakes. Per Charlton’s website:
The defender featured for Port Vale at the Valley on Boxing Day in 1932 in a game that was abandoned due to fog, and subsequently joined the Addicks, lining up for Charlton in their 2-1 triumph in the rearranged fixture in April 1933.
This is the only example I can find of a player transferring between two teams following an abandonment and playing for both. The issue of course is that the original abandoned game doesn't count, unlike the Red Sox game which restarted where the game had been ended. pic.twitter.com/AXQMeIq4Gb
— Garry Brogden (@atomicloonybin) August 28, 2024
A couple of other stories are worth mentioning, even if strictly speaking they don’t involve somebody playing for both teams in the same game. “This reminded me of a fantastic entry in the essential book The Who’s Who of Derby County,” begins David Hopkins. “It involves one Henry Harbour, who in the first ever league season was an Everton reserve player. Derby arrived at Everton in October 1888 with only 10 players, so Harbour was ‘borrowed from the opposition to make up the numbers’. No word on how hard he tried, but a 4-2 defeat for Derby suggests he wasn’t particularly instrumental. Apparently, that game was also Mr Harbour’s only experience of league football.”
Mitchell Sandler, meanwhile, highlights this section from Albert Pape’s Wikipedia page.
In February 1925, Clapton Orient travelled to a match against a Manchester United side that had just sold its star striker, Bill Henderson, to Preston North End. United manager John Chapman had telephoned the Orient manager Peter Proudfoot before they left London, and the two clubs agreed a fee of £1,070 for Pape. They met up at Manchester Piccadilly station just after noon, and Pape – who was a friend of the United captain, Frank Barson, and had relatives in nearby Bolton – quickly agreed terms.
The details were wired to the Football Association and the Football League at around 1.30pm, and although Pape had been named in Orient’s starting lineup for the match, he was confirmed as a Manchester United player with about an hour left before kick-off. Pape was not only allowed to start the match in the colours of Manchester United, but he also scored the team’s third goal in a 4–2 win over his previous employers, as well as hitting the post with a header late in the game.
All of the above were competitive games, in which the rules prohibit somebody playing both sides of the fence. It’s different in friendlies, testimonials, exhibitions and charity games, where anything goes and dozens of footballers have played a half for each side. The most famous example is probably Pelé’s final match in 1977, when he appeared for both New York Cosmos and Santos in front of an adoring crowd at the Giants Stadium in New York.
Legend has it that George Best played for both San Jose Earthquakes (his club at the time) and Motherwell during a friendly at Fir Park in October 1981, although it’s not on YouTube so we’ve no idea what to believe.
The brilliant Polish playmaker Kazimierz Deyna not only played but scored for both teams when Manchester City lost 2-1 in a friendly against Legia Warsaw in 1979. Deyna, a legend at Legia, had joined City the previous season.
Roy Keane played a half each for Manchester United and Celtic during his testimonial at Old Trafford in 2006. Alas for lovers of dark comedy and unscheduled displays of the human temper, nobody tried to drape a half-and-half scarf on him at the end. Other players who had a go on both sides during their testimonial include Jamie Carragher (Liverpool v Everton), Andrea Pirlo (Blue Stars v White Stars) and Michael Ballack (World XI v Ballack & Friends).
The growth of Legends football has provided ample opportunities for ageing heroes to swing both ways: Xabi Alonso (Liverpool Legends v Bayern Munich Legends), Ruud van Nistelrooy (Manchester United Legends v Real Madrid Legends). And finally, Paul Scholes’s last game as a professional footballer was the Champions League final of 2011. A few months later he played a half for each side in a Coaches v Dads charity match at Stalybridge Celtic Juniors.
Hat-tricks bridging seasons
“Hoffenheim’s Andrej Kramaric ended the previous Bundesliga with a hat-trick against Bayern and welcomed Holstein Kiel into the league with another treble. How many players have bridged two seasons in this way?” asks Luka Barisic.
Aptly enough, Dirk Maas – a man who rarely fails to hit the back of the Knowledge net – has written in with three more examples:
Eusébio Farense 2-5 Benfica, 28 May 1972; Benfica 6-0 Leixões, 9 September 1972
Dirk Kuyt Feyenoord 7-1 FC Zwolle, 16 May 2004; Feyenoord 6-1 De Graafschap, 15 August 2004
Luis Suárez Granada 0-3 Barcelona, 14 May 2016; Barcelona 6-2 Betis, 20 August 2016
Rolling roll call of managers
“Preston North End sacked Ryan Lowe after one league game of this season,” writes Sam Coare. “His interim replacement Mike Marsh left after their second league game, replaced by new boss Paul Heckingbottom. This will mean three different men will have taken charge of the team’s opening three league matches. Surely that must be a first?”
We can’t find another case of a team having a different manager for their first three league games. But there is a cracking mid-season tale from the Netherlands, retold here by Bas Vlaming: “In the 2016-17 Eerste Divisie, De Graafschap decided to sack their manager Jan Vreman in December, but his permanent replacement Henk de Jong was not directly available.
“To bridge the two games, Jan Oosterhuis was appointed as interim manager, but got sent off in his first match in charge against MVV. This brought Dennis te Braak in the fold for the remaining game against Almere, with De Jong finally taking charge afterwards. Result: four matches, four different managers in charge.”
Te Braak, the last resort, was the only manager to avoid defeat in those four matches: his team whipped Almere City 4-1.
Knowledge archive
“Is there any truth in the story that Harry Redknapp once fielded a spectator during a West Ham game?” asked Terry Williams in 2006. “Legend has it that the Hammers were having a shocker and a fan was heckling them. Harry is then supposed to have turned round and said: ‘If you think you can do any better, then prove it!’”
Incredibly, the legend was true. In 1994, Redknapp was assistant manager of West Ham and his side were playing Oxford City in a pre-season friendly when … well, we’ll let this spectacular long read mop it all up.
Can you help?
“On 23 August, bottom club Drogheda United defeated Sligo Rovers 7-0 in the League of Ireland Premier Division. The match was their 28th of a 36-game season. Excluding the first few weeks of the season, when a strong team might find themselves bottom, has the team in last place ever won by a bigger margin?” asks Colm Kearns.
“Who has scored the most consecutive hat-tricks?” muses Macca.
“Burnley managed to sell or loan out five players during the latest transfer window who have already scored for them this season (Wilson Odobert, Dara O’Shea, Vitinho, Zeki Amdouni and Johann Berg Gudmundsson). Has any team transferred/loaned out more goalscorers during the summer window?” wonders Marcos Garcia.
Who (and when) were the first professional club to field an eleven where no players were born before 1980? Same question for 1990 and 2000..
— rudy (@RudyR23) September 3, 2024
“I’ve just stumbled across a photo of Newcastle United doing an open-top bus parade emblazoned with the words ‘FA Cup finalists 99’. Are there any other examples of bus parades after defeat?” enquires Mark Cookney.
“Sorry to lower the tone but curiosity got the better of me: last week, Sebastian Munoz was sent off for appearing to urinate on the pitch, and in 2016 in Sweden, Adam Lindin Ljungkvist was given a second yellow card for ‘unsportsmanlike’ behaviour when he audibly broke wind. Are there any other examples of players being given their marching orders for bodily functionality?” wonders Dave Payn.
“In the Conference League playoff round, Cercle Brugge lost 4-1 at home to Wisla Krakow but qualified by virtue of a 6-1 win away from home in the first leg,” notes Richard Place. “Is this the heaviest home defeat in a two-legged tie by a team that still went through?”
“Scunthorpe are top of the National League North and recently played consecutive games against the team in second: Kidderminster Harries on Saturday and Curzon Ashton last week. Has a team ever been involved in more consecutive 1st v 2nd clashes?” asks Cameron McGlone.
