The most numbers worn by one player at the World Cup?
Three players have played in five different World Cup finals competitions. While Gianluigi Buffon was Italy’s number 22 at France 98, he wore 1 in 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2014. …
Christian Abbiati wishes you a happy new year
New Year’s Day is 01/01, so perhaps it should be made a special day for goalkeepers. One netminder who never seemed to carry 1 on his back, however, was the …
Ireland’s forty shades of numbers
We’re aware of the irony, that this is called the Squad Numbers Blog but the curator prefers the older 1-11 style. When squad numbers became ubiquitous, we accepted it under …
Baba Rahman installs himself on our list of enemies
Long-time fans of this blog – those who preferred the earlier stuff, as opposed to all the rest of you Johnny Come Latelies – will recall that the first entry …
Dani Alves’ rollercoaster
Barcelona announced their 2015-16 numbers yesterday, with the most notable change being that Dani Alves has taken the number 6 shirt which Xavi recently vacated. By and large, we’re all …
Love me Ten-der
It’s 20 years to the day since Dennis Bergkamp signed for Arsenal for what was then a British record of £7.5m – though, as it was widely accepted that Stan …
Arsenal’s brief reversion to 1-11
It’s rare to hear TV commentators talk about squad numbers, but the BBC’s Steve Wilson (we think it was him anyway – post Motson and Davies, the Beeb’s commentators seem …
Liverpool’s beautiful imperfections
Regular readers of the blog will know that we have a fondness for the numbering system used by Liverpool in their glory days of the 1970s and 80s. It’s something …
West Brom’s venture into the past
For Saturday’s Premier League game against Leicester City, West Bromwich Albion honoured the late Jeff Astle by wearing a replica of the kit worn in the 1968 FA Cup final …
France’s 1978 dalliance with green and white
We were delighted when Jess Cully (@moonhot97) got in touch recently with the story of how France coped in the infamous 1978 World Cup game against Hungary, when they had …