‘I don't know why I got the trophy': football's unusual player-of-the-match awards
'The Inter keeper Yann Sommer was named player of the match against Barcelona despite conceding three goals. He made some great saves so it wasn't undeserved, but I wondered if there were other unusual PotM awards,' says John Barrow.
This season's Champions League tie between Real Madrid and Atlético will be remembered for Julián Alvarez's two-touch penalty being ruled out. Before that Alvarez had inspired Atlético to a 1-0 victory on the night that took the tie to a penalty shootout; he was Uefa's player of the match. Nick Berry could have written a song about it.
In the modern era players are usually made to pose with their award regardless of the context. Hence the memetastic pictures of Kai Havertz and Alexandra Popp after Germany were eliminated at the group stage of the 2022 and 2023 World Cups, respectively. Both attempted to ascertain whether looks can kill a camera, never mind human beings.
Kevin De Bruyne was almost as unimpressed when he was anointed after Belgium's scruffy 1-0 win over Canada at Qatar 2022. Online votes were used to decide the player of the match at the tournament, which led to a few eyebrow-raising winners. 'I don't think I played a great game,' said De Bruyne. 'I don't know why I got the trophy, maybe it's because of the name.'
Christian Eriksen was named player of the match as a symbolic gesture after suffering a cardiac arrest during the match against Finland at Euro 2020. Denmark lost that game 1-0, and Eriksen joined a surprisingly long list of players who have been named player of the match at a major tournament despite their team losing.
The Danes were involved in another such example 19 years earlier when they ended France's miserable, goalless World Cup defence with a 2-0 victory in Incheon. France had rushed back a half-fit Zinedine Zidane in the hope of a miracle; you can probably guess who took the award. Zidane didn't play particular badly, but according to Sofascore's World Cup performance archive – which we think comes from the Opta database – he was the joint-11th best player on the field that day.
A week earlier Rivaldo was the man of the match, as it was called then, after making one and scoring one in Brazil's 2-1 victory over Turkey. So far, so fair. But that game is remembered solely for his risible playacting in injury time to get Hakan Unsal sent off. Presumably the MotM decision had already been taken and it didn't occur to anyone that it could be changed, or at least be renamed the Foul Play Award.
We should stress that most of these awards are unusual rather than undeserved. In the Women's FA Cup final of 2020, Everton keeper Sandy MacIver performed heroically to take the match against Manchester City to extra-time. City's class eventually told in a 3-1 win but MacIver was player of the match.
Here's that longer list of individual award-winning players on the losing side at major tournaments. Goalkeepers are in italics, and you'll probably spot a pattern:
Euro 96 final Czech Republic 1-2 Germany (PotM: Karel Poborsky)
Euro 2000 Netherlands 1-0 Czech Republic (Pavel Nedved); Italy 2-1 Sweden (Henrik Larsson); France 2-1 Italy (Francesco Totti*)
* At least according to this Uefa page. The official technical report of the tournament gives it to Thierry Henry. Anyone got any correction fluid?
World Cup 2002 Denmark 2-0 France (Zinedine Zidane); Germany 1-0 USA (Claudio Reyna)
World Cup 2006 England 0-0 Portugal (1-3 pens, Owen Hargreaves)
World Cup 2014 Italy 0-1 Uruguay (Gianluigi Buffon); Belgium 2-1 USA (Tim Howard); Netherlands 2-1 Mexico (Guillermo Ochoa); Netherlands 0-0 Costa Rica (4-3 pens, Keylor Navas)
World Cup 2018 Croatia 1-1 Denmark (3-2 pens, Kasper Schmeichel)
World Cup 2019 England 1-0 Argentina (Vanina Correa); Netherlands 2-1 Canada (Christine Sinclair); USA 3-0 Chile (Christiane Endler)
Euro 2020 Denmark 0-1 Finland (Christian Eriksen)
The Keylor Navas award in 2014 is especially interesting because the match is remembered for another goalkeeper – Tim Krul, who was brought on specifically before the penalty shootout and became the hero.
Finally, Ollie Watkins only played nine minutes (plus added time) against the Netherlands in last year's European Championship semi-final but his dramatic late winner made him an irresistible choice for player of the match.
'Sporting Kansas City became the first team in MLS history to win a match without a shot on goal,' writes George Jones. 'They defeated the defending champion Los Angeles Galaxy 1-0 thanks to a first-half own goal. Has this happened in other leagues, then. Many examples?'
It's worth reiterating that Sporting Kansas City didn't have a single shot at goal, never mind on target, which is extraordinary. One-nil wins in which the victors had no efforts on target are more common; thanks to all of you who sent in the below examples.
Premier League 2003-04 Manchester City 0-1 Middlesbrough (Sun Jihai og)
Premier League 2005-06 West Brom 0-1 Sunderland (Steve Watson og)
Serie A 2021-22 Napoli 0-1 Spezia (Juan Jesus og)
Brasileiro Serie A 2023 Cruzeiro 1-0 São Paulo (Rafinha og)
Euro 2024 playoff Wales 0-0 Poland (4-5 pens)
WSL 2024-25 Tottenham 1-0 Leicester (Janina Leitzig og)
'Has a player ever scored a hat-trick for a title-winning club but not received a winners' medal due to lack of appearances?' asks Masai Graham.
We can think of at least one example. Ronnie Rosenthal arrived at Anfield in March 1990 with Liverpool locked in an arm-wrestle for the title with Aston Villa. Rosenthal scored a jaw-dropping hat-trick on his full debut, a 4-0 win at Charlton, and added four more goals at Anfield as Liverpool accelerated to the title.
The lateness of his arrival – until 2002-03 the transfer deadline was in March – meant he was unable to play the 10 games required for an official medal in those days. He had to settle for a key role in Liverpool's last title of the 20th century: eight games, seven goals. And we're pretty sure somebody will have given him a medal.
'I remember watching MotD about 30 or more years ago, when there was a technical hitch and the pictures from the match ended abruptly,' recalled Bill Wilson in 2007. 'The camera instantly defaulted to a relaxed Jimmy Hill in the studio with his feet on a desk, smoking a pipe, reading a broadsheet. He obviously wasn't expecting it! Can you or anybody remember the game/date/etc. And does any video exist of the event?'
'At last ... someone else who remembers the Jimmy Hill pipe incident,' enthuses Gareth Morgan. 'It was hilarious, although didn't happen quite as Bill describes: the show in question was not MotD but Nationwide. At the end of Friday evening's edition, Jimmy Hill used to host a 10-minute slot called Sportswide, where he previewed the weekend's sport. One time, the clip from some highlights ended abruptly and Jimmy suddenly returned to the screen still sat at his desk but smoking his pipe and chatting to someone off-camera; he turned to look at the camera, realised he was back live, gave a stupid grin, muttered something like 'oh we're back' and put his pipe under the desk and carried on with the show. I'm not sure of the exact date, but it would have been in 1976 or 1977.'
We couldn't find the video in question, but here's Jimmy and his pipe in the MotD studio.
'Leyton Orient's Charlie Kelman was four yards offside when he scored against Stockport in the playoffs,' begins Jessica Hibbert. 'What's the furthest a player has been indisputably offside before going on to score?'
'Venezuelan footballer Darwin Machís has been relegated four seasons in a row, all from La Liga: with Granada in 2022; Real Vallodolid in 2023, Cádiz in 2024 (he was on loan), and again with Real Valladolid this year,' notes Derek Robertson. 'Surely nobody can top this?'
'In terms of aggregate league position, will Tottenham v Manchester United be the worst European final ever?' asks Phil Taylor (and dozens of others).
'Brian Graham has just scored his 100th goal for Partick Thistle at the age of 37 having not joined the club until the age of 32. Has anyone ever reached a century after joining so late in their career?' writes Calum Stewart.
'Barcelona joined Roma (2018) in losing a Champions League semi-final despite scoring six goals,' notes Dan Almond. 'Has a team ever scored more across two legs of a major semi-final and still been beaten?'
Mail us with your questions and answers.
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Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Extortion, tasteless stunts and malign forces – the endless fascination with Michael Schumacher
As soon as the initials 'MS' appeared on a white race helmet, it felt like a message from the void. For nearly 12 years even the faintest update on Michael Schumacher had arrived second-hand at best, but here, at last, was a signature purportedly by the man himself. Sir Jackie Stewart, for whose Race Against Dementia charity the gesture was made, could not conceal his joy that the helmet – adorned with the Royal Stewart tartan and worn across a career spanning the Scot's three Formula One titles – had now been signed by all 20 living world champions. The wider significance, however, was that it represented the closest connection yet to an icon removed from public view, at once a precious affirmation of his survival but also a reminder of his desperate condition, truly an anguish without end. 'A wonderful moment,' said Johnny Herbert, Schumacher's former Benetton team-mate, on seeing those two surprise letters in black marker pen. 'We haven't seen something emotional like this in years, and hopefully it's a sign Michael is on the mend. It has been a long, horrible journey for the family, and maybe we'll see him in the F1 paddock soon.' Herbert's sentiments testify to the power of hope. While well-intentioned, they are negated by all available evidence. Since Schumacher struck his head on a rock while skiing in Méribel in December 2013, suffering such devastating brain trauma that he was placed in a coma for 250 days, he has made no public appearance of any kind. The likelihood, given the gravity of his injuries and wife Corinna's insistence on absolute privacy, is that he will never be seen by the wider world again. The effect of the family's scrupulous discretion is twofold. On the one hand, they have created a ring of steel around Schumacher, to the point where nobody can state with certainty even where he is being treated. As Corinna has put it: 'Michael always protected us, and now we are protecting Michael.' But the dearth of official health updates has bred a fascination so intense that the most elaborate fictions can masquerade as fact. In 2023, Die Aktuelle, a German women's interest weekly, ran a strapline promising 'Schumacher: the first interview', only for it to be disclosed at the end of the article that the quotes were generated by artificial intelligence. The publishers had to pay £170,000 in compensation, while the editor was fired. Today the only semblance of access to Schumacher's situation comes via his former inner circle in the sport. Just this week, Flavio Briatore, the irrepressible figure instrumental in his mid-Nineties glories at Benetton, offered an unusual level of detail, appearing to indicate the seven-time champion was bed-bound. 'If I close my eyes,' he told Corriere della Sera, 'I see him smiling after a victory. I prefer to remember him like that rather than him just lying on a bed. Corinna and I talk often, though.' Sabine Kehm, the Schumacher family's spokeswoman, did not respond to a request for comment. But Briatore's policy is one that Bernie Ecclestone, the sport's former ringmaster, has also adopted. While he is still in touch with Corinna, he clarified as early as 2015 that he would not be paying house visits, preferring to cherish the memory of the Michael he knew. Asked if this feeling remained the same a decade on, he replied: 'Absolutely. A hundred per cent.' Briatore's intervention came after his ex-wife, Elisabetta Gregoraci, said in 2020: 'Michael doesn't speak, he communicates with his eyes. Only three people can visit him and I know who they are.' Who are the three? Two we can identify with confidence are Jean Todt and Ross Brawn, the team principal and technical director during Schumacher's all-conquering years at Ferrari. Gerhard Berger, who went from being the German's fierce adversary to a close friend – and who, by eerie coincidence, broke his arm skiing off-piste just 10 weeks after that fateful Méribel morning – is understood to be the third. Brawn has spent time on several occasions with Schumacher at his vast house in Gland, Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Geneva, cementing an unbreakable bond. He has provided the odd expression of optimism, saying in 2016 that the driver was showing 'encouraging signs' of recovery and that he was 'extremely hopeful we'll see Michael as we knew him at some point in the future'. Todt has long been the most frequent guest, welcomed by the family around twice a month. He has given a few more specifics, divulging that he and Schumacher have watched F1 races together on television. The Frenchman's reflections – which, despite their tenderness, acknowledge that 'there's no longer the same communication as before' – supports Gregoraci's suggestion that Schumacher is non-verbal. There is further corroboration from Felix Görner, a presenter with German broadcaster RTL and once the driver's frequent paddock companion. 'He is a person dependent on caregivers, who can no longer express himself through language,' he said recently. 'It's a very sad state of affairs. He was actually a hero, an indestructible hero. We're just clinging to hope, to a straw. But he's simply not well, so we won't see him again.' In many ways, Corinna's ability to sustain the official omertà around her husband is extraordinary. In 2019, the policy was tested to the limit by confirmation of their son Mick's elevation to the F1 ranks. But throughout his two seasons at the summit, inhabiting the most oppressive goldfish bowl in sport, Kehm acted on Corinna's behalf to ensure that he was never lured into any unwitting bulletin about Michael. The same hyper-vigilance has extended to the couple's daughter Gina. At her wedding last October to partner Iain Bethke, held inside the Schumachers' lavish Majorcan villa, guests reportedly had their phones confiscated to prevent the leaking of any images or videos. This still failed to stop accounts surfacing in Germany that Michael had attended the ceremony – reports since rubbished by Herbert as 'A1 fake news'. That said, the Schumacher link to the Balearic island is well-established. Spanish newspapers indicated in 2020 that Corinna had moved Michael on a more permanent basis to a property in Port d'Andratx, formerly owned by Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez, as she began a gradual relocation from their Swiss home. But even the particulars of this arrangement are fiercely guarded, with the family's precise division of time between Majorca and Switzerland kept secret so as to deter fans and paparazzi from prying on the houses. You can understand the reasons for reticence. In some quarters, the obsession with Michael's situation has long since gone from ghoulish to outright criminal. The Schumachers are still reeling from a trial earlier this year that culminated in three men being found guilty of a £12.5 million plot to blackmail them. Yilmaz Tozturkan, a nightclub bouncer, received a three-year prison sentence after he, with his IT expert son Daniel Lins and Schumacher's former bodyguard Markus Fritsche, had threatened to upload 1,500 pictures and videos of Michael, as well as confidential medical records, on the dark web unless they were paid the money. The material had been stolen from a computer and given to Fritsche, who passed it to Tozturkan at a cafe. Both Tozturkan and Lins had claimed to be offering the family a 'business deal'. Before the verdict was announced, Tozturkan said: 'I'm very sorry and ashamed for what I have done. It was a very disgusting thing. I take full responsibility.' During the trial, the Schumachers had voiced worries that one hard drive containing sensitive photos had not been recovered, despite several searches of the defendants' residences. Thilo Damm, their lawyer, confirmed their plan to appeal against the 'lenient' punishment, saying: 'We don't know where the missing hard drive is. So there is the possibility of another threat through the back door.' Kehm, the first witness called, gave an insight into the acute anxieties inside the Schumacher camp around breaches of trust. 'I got a call, and it was a number we didn't recognise, so at first we didn't answer,' she told the court in Wuppertal. 'But it kept calling and calling, so in the end I answered, and it was a man who said he had pictures of Michael, that if the family didn't want them published he could help. We would have to pay €15 million. He said the money was for the pictures and his go-between service.' In Corinna and the long-serving Kehm, at his side since joining as his personal press officer in 1999, Michael has two formidably effective gatekeepers. Now that he is seemingly no longer in a position to dictate his wishes, the two women unswervingly loyal to him exercise them on his behalf, upholding his long-held principle that his private life is off-limits. 'We are getting on with our lives,' she explained in the 2021 Netflix documentary Schumacher, the only interview she has given since the day of horror in the French Alps. ''Private is private,' as he always said.' Theirs was always a strong marriage, even under the stresses of the F1 hamster-wheel. Michael once said of Corinna, a celebrated equestrienne who became a European champion in Western-style horse riding: 'We share the same values. During all the time I was racing, she was my guardian angel.' Still, you cannot help but wonder at the toll that the tragedy of Michael's circumstances has wrought on his wife's wellbeing. Eddie Jordan, who died in March but who had given Schumacher his first F1 chance, recruiting him to his eponymous team in 1991, did not shy away from a view on the subject. Having known Corinna since before she married Michael, he said in 2023: 'This was the most horrific situation. Corinna has not been able to go to a party, to lunch or this or that – she's like a prisoner, because everyone would want to talk to her about Michael when she doesn't need reminding of it every minute.' Schumacher accumulated a vast fortune as the most decorated driver of his era, with a net worth estimated at £450 million. 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Each time that a gross violation of privacy occurs, the culprit is full of contrition. Just as Tozturkan admitted his extortion attempt was a 'disgusting' act, Bianca Pohlmann, managing director of Funke – the company behind the notorious AI article in Die Aktuelle – apologised for the 'tasteless and misleading' stunt. And yet the pattern keeps repeating, with the voracious global appetite to learn more about Schumacher naturally hardening a resolve among his protectors to give nothing. Willi Weber, his ex-manager, has been critical of this circumspect approach, previously accusing the Schumachers of 'not telling the whole truth' about Michael and urging them to 'pour pure wine for his millions of fans'. At this stage, any such urgings are redundant. What remains of Michael's life will unfold according to Corinna's prescription, where, to whatever degree possible, he can feel the strength of the family bond, and where she and their two children can, in turn, map out their lives without prurient intrusion. It is worth asking whether that white helmet, now the pride of the Sir Jackie Stewart collection, should mark the end of the intrigue. There is something intensely poignant about seeing the addition of that 'MS' beneath the visor. It is as much as we had any right to expect, and as much as he is ever likely to provide. On the surface, it might look insignificant, with even Stewart conceding that it had needed the guiding hand of Corinna to produce. But the weight of its symbolism is profound, signifying that Schumacher, now 56 years old and the figure by whom all other champions are judged, is still with us, still capable of communicating through his touch. In an otherwise shattering tale, it is the one consolation to which we can cling.
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Daily Mail
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Footy great Dermott Brereton reveals secret health battle that is making even simple daily tasks impossible
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