Which footballers finished their careers with more own goals than goals scored?
On 14 October 2026, readers of The Guardian’s The Knowledge column asked whether any professional footballers ended their senior careers having scored more own goals than goals for their teams. The piece reviews known cases uncovered by the column’s research and addresses several related reader queries.
The column notes that while it has previously catalogued players with the most own goals, it had not comprehensively examined careers that finished “in debit.” Contributors identified a handful of candidates from different eras and leagues, and the article flags gaps in some club records that may conceal further examples. The responses combine named examples, league-specific data and caveats about incomplete sources.
“Southampton cult hero Francis Benali scored only one ‘positive’ goal in his career and was legendary for banging in goal-of-the-month contenders at his own end, most notably a bullet header against Oldham in the 1993-94 season,” writes Daz Pearce; the column reports finding only a couple of own goals for Benali, the other cited as against Manchester United in 1999-2000, while also noting the authors were unable to consult a comprehensive Southampton database and may have missed additional incidents.
Riccardo Ferri is recorded as having six goals and eight own goals in Serie A, with the article adding that he may have scored three further goals in cup competitions but that own-goal data cited relate only to Serie A matches. “Jamie Carragher finished his career with four goals and seven own goals,” writes Dean Whearty, and the column recalls Carragher scoring two own goals in one match against Manchester United in 1999 and another in the 2006 FA Cup final; it also records that some sources attribute five normal goals to Carragher, including an August 2008 equaliser against Middlesbrough that the official Premier League site credits as an Emmanuel Pogatetz own goal.
“Sven van Beek is the all-time leading own-goal scorer for the Eredivisie, with eight in a career at Feyenoord, Willem II and Heerenveen, over the course of 12 seasons and 193 matches,” writes Rob de Hair; the column adds that van Beek scored five goals for his teams in those Eredivisie matches and reports he is still playing in Qatar and appears to have netted five goals for Al-Shahania. The piece also cites Luigi Zannier as a defender who, in Serie A matches, scored three and put in six own goals, and quotes Gavin Buckland on Everton’s Billy Balmer: “At the turn of the 20th century he netted eight goals during open play; all, unfortunately, at the wrong end of the pitch,” while noting Balmer’s only right-end goal in more than 300 appearances was a single penalty in 1899.
On the question of the earliest point in a season a top-flight team can be confirmed as having a trophyless season, the column contrasts domestic-cup timing across countries. It cites Tom Reed’s example of Bournemouth being knocked out of both domestic cups by 10 January last season and calculates Derby County (2007-08) as an early English case: knocked out of the League Cup on 28 August, eliminated from the FA Cup in the fourth round on 26 January, and mathematically unable to win the Premier League after their 26th league match on 9 February following a 3-0 defeat by Tottenham coupled with an Arsenal victory. The article also explains that early Coppa Italia rounds mean Serie A clubs can be out of cup contention before Christmas and states that Lecce and Brescia were both, by the authors’ calculations, mathematically out of the 34-game Scudetto race after 22 matches, with the decisive dates given as 6 February 1994 for Lecce and 5 March 1995 for Brescia.
Other reader queries addressed include a goal-off-the-backside example from Tom Clarke: Patrick Bamford in late in the 2023-24 Championship season scored in a 4-3 win at Middlesbrough that Clarke describes as “literally got one to go in off his backside.” On the origin and usage of the term “shithousery,” the column traces the S-word to Scouse slang of the 1960s via John Ashdown and notes entries in the Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang; it quotes Duncan Hamilton and multiple historical uses, then relays the lexicographer John Williams’s assessment: “The word does not (yet) feature in the Oxford English Dictionary,” writes the lexicographer John Williams, “but taking the ever-excellent Jonathon Green’s Dictionary of Slang as a baseline, we see that his earliest citation is from 2014, with Nicolás Otamendi as the alleged culprit. As this is a Twitter citation, I looked back further. The first football personality accused appears to be Arsène Wenger in 2011, the accusation coming from the Guardian’s own Daniel Harris.” The column also records an 11-goal Allsvenskan game — AIK 5, Brommapojkarna 6 — in which every goal arrived in the second half, a reader’s note that Maidenhead United wing-back Jordon Ragguette received an international call-up for Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and featured in four recent Concacaf Nations League wins giving him a 100% international win record in those matches, and a Vietnamese example from 2022 where Hai Phong had a goal ruled out for handball after a referee saw a stadium replay despite VAR not arriving in Vietnam until 2023.
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