Football: Knowledge - the highest scorer in one game of football

"Olympos Xylofagou's striker, Panagiotis Pontikos, banged in 16 goals against SEK Ayios Athanasios FC at the weekend," writes Tinashe Shoko. "Surely this is a record?"

Our friends at the Guinness Book of Records can confirm that Pontikos's feat is indeed a record, Tinashe, although one other man has equalled his heroics. Step forward, Stephan Stanis, who also scored 16 goals for his side Racing Club in a French Cup match against Aubry Asturies in December 1942.

In international football, the record for the number of goals scored by a single player in one match is held by Australian Archie Thompson, who scored 13 goals for the Socceroos in their 31-0 victory over American Samoa. In England, Luton Town's Joe Payne, who started life on the wing and was playing up front for the first time for the Hatters, holds the record for the most goals scored in a league game by an individual player. Payne scored 10 goals in the Hatters' 12-0 victory over Bristol Rovers on Easter Monday in 1936.

These feats are nothing compared to the biggest margin of victory in club football, though. Madagascan side, Stade Olympique de L'Emyrne, put the ball in their own net 149 times in a league match against champions, Adema, in protest at a refereeing decision earlier in the match. "There have been a couple of quirky games where teams have deliberately let in as many as possible," admits the Football Association's historian, David Barber. "I can also vaguely remember reading about a Sunday league game in Nottinghamshire in which a team deliberately let the opposition score in protest, and they lost 50-2."

LOST IN TRANSLATION

"During any English newspaper feature of a top Italian side, the reporter will inevitably use, at some point, the Italian translation of their colours in italics (eg Rossoneri for Milan)," points out Dean Anderson. "Do the clubs themselves refer regularly to these nicknames or are the reporters just showing off? Do foreign match reporters reciprocate and refer to the Gunners or the Reds, for example?"

The answer to your first question is yes, Dean - Italian newspapers and indeed fans themselves regularly refer to Italian clubs by their colours, which have long been used as rather uninventive nicknames. Even the Italian national side is regularly referred to as gli Azzurri ("the Blues").

Your second question is a little less straightforward, not least because "foreign" is rather a broad area. We can tell you that Italian and French journalists normally operate the same way - referring to Manchester United, for example, as i Red Devils and les Red Devils, respectively. But both do also occasionally translate nicknames, normally with clubs they report on less often. Bolton, for instance, are sometimes know as les Vagabonds (a rough translation of 'Wanderers') in France.

The same is broadly true in Spain, but our man Sid Lowe reckons the nation's press has something of an obsession with translating English names generally. "They're always translating the names of the English royal family, so it's Principe Guillermo or Principe Carlo, instead of Prince William or Prince Charles," says Sid. "Most bizarre of all, though, they always refer to the English football side as los Pross, even though nobody has been able to explain why. It's definitely not a Spanish word, and everyone seems to think it's what the English call themselves. The best explanation I've heard is that it has come from 'pros', as in 'professionals'."

In Germany, original and translated nicknames are used fairly equally but with a few added peculiarities. "Both original and translated nicknames are used in Germany," admits our correspondent Raphael Honigstein. "But one very peculiar - and totally infuriating - national habit is adding an English team's city after its name - as in Arsenal London or Chelsea London. Even news agencies routinely do it, and a lot of people are convinced these sides really exist. Thankfully we have not seen Tottenham Hotspur London or Aston Villa Birmingham yet."

Do you know of any other examples from around the world? Then let us know at knowledge@guardian.co.uk

CEAU?ESCU v HELMUTH DUCADAM (2)

Last week we discussed whether Nicolae Ceau?escu's son, Valentin, really had Steaua Bucharest goalkeeper Helmuth Ducadam's arms broken in a dispute over a car. Our very own Jonathan Wilson doubted the story, and Chris Stephen, who was once the Guardian's man in Bucharest, backs him up.

"I worked as a stringer for the Guardian after the 1989 revolution and met Valentin a couple of times. He certainly was not the type to beat up a player and, more to the point, Ceau?escu's father had plenty of money to splash out on cars for his sons; his other son, Nicu, crashed one car while drunk in London. After the revolution Romania was full of people revealing the dark deeds of the Ceau?escus and it is unlikely that Ducadam would have stayed silent. Finally, Valentin was happy to live and work in Romania after the revolution: he was never attacked and was regarded as the quietest of his father's children."

KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVE

"We've all heard it said that the teams who finish one place below the automatic promotion places always lose out to teams who finished 20 points back in the play-offs, but what are the actual records of teams in each spot?" wondered Nathan Walker before last year's play-offs.

With that question hanging in the air, it was time for some good old-fashioned statistical analysis, meaning a delve into the record books, or www.rsssf.com as we like to call them. And because we value our readers we've updated our answer to include last year's play-offs too. To get a fair answer to this question we need, of course, to analyse the data from when the play-offs - in their current format - began: 1988-89. Since then, there have been a total of 54 promotions via the play-offs in the Championship, League One, and League Two (and their equivalents). If we rank the teams from one to four in a seeding system based on play-off positions in which they finished the regular season, we arrive at the following figures:

Championship (and equivalents): No1 seed: five promotions (27.8%); No2 seed: four promotions (22.2%); No3 seed: five promotions (27.8%); No4 seed: four promotions (22.2%).

League One (and equivalents): No1 seed: five promotions (27.8%); No2 seed: three promotions (16.6%); No3 seed: five promotions (27.8%); No4 seed: five promotions (27.8%).

League Two (and equivalents): No1 seed: 12 promotions (66.7%); No2 seed: two promotions (11.1%); No3 seed: two promotions (11.1%); No4 seed: two promotions (11.1%).

Overall: No1 seed: 22 promotions (40.7%); No2 seed: nine promotions (16.7%); No3 seed: 12 promotions (22.2%); No4 seed: 11 promotions (20.4%).

So there you have it. History suggests that the teams finishing fifth and third in the Championship are the most likely to reach the top-flight, Nottingham Forest had better start planning for another season in League One, while the scrum in League Two will clearly be for fourth place. And, overall, the top seed is the most likely to get promoted.

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