“I have just heard CMAT’s song Vincent Kompany because I am cool, young and relevant,” writes the cool, young and relevant Will Unwin. “I was wondering if any other player’s name is the title of a song, beyond simply being referred to?”
In this age of streaming, there are many songs online whose titles are the names of footballers, but a few hundred listens here and there doesn’t make them particularly noteworthy. So we have wound back a bit to a time when songs were more commonly created in studios, not bedrooms.
Resident music anorak John Brewin had a number of suggestions: “Joe Strummer, the late former Clash frontman, made a 1999 album with his Mescaleros band, and the lead-off track from Rock Art and the X-Ray Style was titled Tony Adams.”
Strummer, a Chelsea fan, had this to say: “No one in this country rose up when he was denied the England armband, while he was winning his own fight against alcoholism. People might imagine footy is mundane, sometimes mundane stuff are important. We need people like Tony Adams.”
Another suggestion is Stan Bowles, a 2005 single from the Others, a band whose interests and inspirations were shared with The Libertines. So much so, the song was actually a tribute to Pete Doherty, a famed QPR fan. “Like Stan, Peter’s very dedicated to QPR, and has an abundance of skill and talent, but just like Stan he had a passion for getting intoxicated – and in fact still does,” said Others’ leader Dominic Masters. The following lyric “we′d talk for days in a room off Cambridge Heath Road, smoking bone in your backroom” is presumed not to refer to the maverick former England forward and bookmakers’ friend.
Two more suggestions from John: in 1999, Mogwai, the largely instrumental post-rock combo, did a song called Hugh Dallas, paying tribute to the famed Scottish referee with some rare, breathy singing. “Is the light so bad, were we so bad today?” Mogwai are Celtic fans, Dallas’s officiating having gained some notoriety among Hoops supporters. One more for luck? Eusébio by Louis Philippe with Dean Broderick. Louis Philippe happens to be the musical alter ego of French football writer, Guardian contributor and Football Weekly regular, Philippe Auclair.
Florian Camphausen writes: “In 1983, the British husband-and-wife duo Alan & Denise (that’s Alan Whittle and his wife Denise) bubbled into the German charts at No 43 with Rummenigge, a quirky synth-pop ode to Karl-Heinz Rummenigge’s ‘sexy knees’. Their follow-up, Beckenbauer, Beckenbauer (1986), sank into obscurity. Perhaps because it dulled things down, trading thigh-high tributes for mere ‘sex appeal’.”
How about (Roberto) Baggio by the self-confessed plastic fan, Miles Kane, the Wirral native who supported Manchester United in his youth but then changed his allegiance to Liverpool.
“Adam Pastel, a singer from California, dropped Trinity Rodman earlier this year, titled after the USWNT and Washington Spirit forward,” croons Kyle Hill. “He actually performed the song at half-time of the Spirit’s season opener back in April, which gets used heavily in the music video. It, uh, wasn’t a great performance. From either Adam Pastel or the Spirit.”
Mark Gibbings-Jones takes us to Japan. “Where better to start than the Shibuya-kei scene? Specifically the work of genre-straddling solo artist Yukari Fresh, whose 1999 album New Year’s Fresh included songs named Paul Scholes and Michael Owen, the latter throwing in a sample of Barry Davies’ commentary for good measure. Her fascination with the England team of the era didn’t end there – 2003’s Scholesy’s Stamp is a winsome ballad about the midfield schemer, 1998’s David is about … you can probably guess, while 2002’s ‘Macca at the Old Wembley’ is about Steve McManaman rather than Paul McCartney.”
And finally, Australian funk band Vaudeville Smash collaborated with commentator Les Murray in 2014 for their song Zinedine Zidane. It was never going to bother the Grammys, but the video’s worth a watch.
We’re sure there are many more worthy additions. If you have one, you know where to send it.
An away-day to remember
“I’m savouring a veritable feast of Luxo-British football in the Conference League: Differdange v The New Saints, followed by Strassen v Dundee United,” writes Martin Davies. “Both games will take place at Differdange’s stadium. Have two British teams played European ties in the same stadium within 48 hours of each other before?”
Raymond Simpson can offer not just another example with British teams, but one that also involves Dundee United – and a much shorter time window. “Both us and Rangers played a match in the same stadium on the same day back in 1983,” Raymond notes.
Jim McLean’s Tangerines faced Maltese outfit Hamrun at the Ta Qali Stadium in the European Cup first round on 14 September 1983, winning their first leg 3-0. Remarkably, their game kicked off at 4.45pm with Rangers’ Cup Winners’ Cup tie against Valletta starting at 3pm, meaning they were effectively back-to-back.
The double-header went ahead despite protests from Malta’s Uefa Cup representatives, Rabat Ajax, and concerns about potential trouble between the two sets of away fans. Dundee United won 6-0 on aggregate and went all the way to the semi-finals, while Rangers won 8-0 in Malta (and a sobering 18-0 on aggregate) but lost to Porto in the next round.
Knowledge archive
“Watching the new, exciting Chelsea beat Birmingham last weekend, I got to thinking about all the fuss we had two years ago when there were only 19 goals on the first weekend of the Premiership/Premier League,” wrote Ken Whannel in August 2007. “What has been the best opening weekend in the history of the English top flight in terms of goals-per-game scored?”
For the winner you have to go all the way back to the Football League’s third-ever season in 1890-91, when only 10 of the league’s 12 teams played in the first round of matches, combining for an impressive 29 goals (5.8 per game). Of course, those figures were slightly skewed by Derby County’s 8-5 win over Blackburn, but every team scored at least once, with Accrington’s 1-1 draw with Burnley the lowest-scoring fixture. As fate would have it Derby were the only team not to score in the second-most exciting opening day, going down 1-0 at Preston three seasons later as the league’s 16 teams combined for 38 goals (4.75 per game).
Since the Premiership/Premier League began the highest goals-per-game ratio on week one has been a rather less spectacular 3.6, achieved in 2003-04 when Blackburn’s 5-1 win over Wolves contributed one sixth of the weekend’s 36 strikes. The highest tally of goals (rather than goals-per-game) for an English top-flight opening weekend, meanwhile, came in 1926-27, when 22 teams combined for 52 goals (4.73 per game).
Can you help?
“I’ve now seen Crystal Palace lift four different trophies at Wembley (Zenith Data Systems Cup, Championship playoff trophy, FA Cup, Community Shield),” writes Toby Kinder. “Manchester United and Liverpool never managed the ZDS, but have both won the European Cup there, as well as all the domestic trophies, so are probably on four too. Can any other club beat that?”
“Just watching Southampton v Wrexham and in the 72nd minute four players with the first name Ryan came on or left the field on both teams,” begins Ryan from Dortmund. “Ryan Longman for Ryan Barnett, Ryan Hardie for Josh Windass (all Wrexham) and Saints’ Ryan Manning coming on for Welington. Are there other examples of the same names coming on around the same time?”
“My uncle and I recently watched Will Still (32) and Fabian Hürzeler (32) do battle in pre-season,” notes Joe Strawson. “Both younger than me, and with a combined age younger than my uncle, are there examples of managers with a lower combined age facing each other?”
“Curtis Jones completed 53 out of 53 passes in the Community Shield. Against Southampton in 2024 he enjoyed a 100% completion rate with 58 passes,” writes Gregg Bakowski. “What is the record number of passes completed by a player with a 100% record in a match? Surely someone has completed more.”
“With Hearts now making noises about winning the Scottish Premiership, I notice it’s actually 65 years since this last happened (1960). With Hibs it’s even longer at 73 years (1952),” writes Paul White. “Is there any other country where a club from its capital city have failed to win its domestic league for so long?”
“A mate mentioned the impressive statistic that Liverpool have not finished lower than eighth in the league since being promoted to the old First Division in 1962. Taking the 1962-63 season as the starting point, what is the lowest position that all current Premier League teams have finished between 1963 and the present?” ask the lads at the Star and Dragon Pub, Carbondale, Illinois. “And what is the lowest any team has fallen that has played at least one season in the top division since 1962-63?”
