Bizarre moment in England
Trainer changes four players in the first minute
19.09.2025 – 06:45 a.m.Reading time: 2 min.
In a cup game in England, a trainer changes four players at once – after a minute. The curious measure has one reason.
Four changes at once are a rarity in football. However, the fact that a game is changed four times in the first minute of the game should hardly ever happen. But this is exactly the case in a cup game in England.
Robbie Savage, coach of the Forest Green Rovers, ordered four players from the field after one minute in a game in the National League Cup against the U21 of the Wolverhampton Wanders – and brought four new ones. For a few seconds, Yahya Bamba, James Balagizi, William Merrett and Akai Bonnick were used for Tom Knowles, Kyle Macallister, Neil Kengni Kuemo and Abraham Kanu.
The reason for the bizarre measure: The rules in the National League Cup state that at least four actors must be in the starting formation of a team who also played in the last league game from the start. Knowles, Macallister, Kengni Kuemo and Kuemo and Kanu had done this in the fifth -class National League in the recent 1-1 win against Scunthorphe United.
Means: Savage apparently only let the four players appear from the start to meet the requirements of the cup competition. The coach had already used a similar trick in August in the game against the U21 of West Bromwich Albion when he took two of his players off the field after two minutes.
Incidentally, the early four-way change against the U21 Wolves did not harm. Forest Green won the game 3-2. For the club from the city of Nailsworth, things are currently going well anyway. In the league, Forest Green is in second place after nine games with 21 points and has not yet lost a game. The return to the League Two, the lowest English professional league, seems to be a very realistic scenario.
Savage had taken over the club in the summer. The 50-year-old Welsh had played 346 games in the Premier League as a professional for Leicester City, Birmingham City, the Blackburn Rovers and Derby County.