That honour belongs to Bobby Robson

Joe Kinnear has hit the headlines for upsetting want-away winger Charles N’Zogbia. In an interview he pronounced the player’s surname as “Insomnia”, which would have been a brilliant joke if he meant it.

While the Frenchman has used the comment as an extraordinarily tenuous excuse to jump off Kinnear’s sinking ship, one of his co-workers took a managerial insult in a much more light-hearted manner when Bobby Robson was in charge:

Reporter to Newcastle’s Shola Ameobi: ‘Do you have a nickname?’
Ameobi: ‘No, not really’
Reporter: ‘What do the lads call you?’
Ameobi: ‘Shola’
Reporter: ‘So what does Bobby Robson call you?’
Ameobi: ‘Carl Cort.’

Robson and Kinnear, however, aren’t the only managers to forget their own players names. The bastion of naming errors is undoubtedly Jack Charlton, who regularly confused one of the world’s most famous footballers with a Moors murderer:

“It’s possible that I may have called Liam Brady Ian on a couple of occasions. I was stuck with this reputation for forgetfulness. And it became a bit of a party piece with me. Announcing the Irish team to the press after training, I’d go, ‘Bonner, Morris, Houghton, Moran - and that big lad, what d’you call him …’ and someone would prompt me - ‘McCarthy!’ - without realising that I was taking the mickey yet again.”