Man Utd striker Ethan Wheatley plays two games in two days
It brought Hughes to mind, as he recounted his crazy 24 hours with UTD Podcast, somehow managing to represent both Wales and Bayern Munich, where he was on loan from Barcelona, on 11 November 1987.
“We needed to win a European Championship game for Wales,” he told us. “I had only just gone to Bayern. [General manager] Uli Hoeness asked me to go to his house for dinner and said so you’ll be able to play for us in the night time and I was thinking to myself is he having a laugh or is he deadly serious?
“He was clearly deadly serious and he did it before Soren Lerby, who played for Denmark against Ireland, funnily enough, from recollection. He flew him back so he said leave it with me.
“Unfortunately, we got beat in the Welsh game but I jumped in the car with Uli and we ended up in a little plane, it wasn’t a flash jet or anything. We were playing Czechoslovakia, so it was just over the border from Germany, and the game was actually going on, the floodlights were on when we flew over the stadium as they were playing!
“We had to land at the airport and I jumped in a green Porsche, from memory, and Uli drove like a bat out of hell! We got there at half-time. I don’t know how they did it, I must have been on the teamsheet clearly. We were losing the game so they made a change on 60 minutes and, lo and behold, I came on. As you would expect, we won the game and I was the big hero!
“The reality was I didn’t get a kick. I was absolutely knackered and was thinking what am I doing, running around, missing balls and falling over! I came on with Michael Rummenigge and he scored two goals to give us the win. Yet he didn’t get a mention, it was all about me playing in two games on the day, which was a bit harsh on him!”
