Five of football's most bizarre spelling mistakes after Yeovil Town's merchandise gaff

Yeovil Town’s merchandisers have had a week to forget after fans spotted that the team’s name was spelled incorrectly on the packaging of official scarves.

Though the knitwear itself is free of errors, the labels on the scarves for the National League team - who were recently promoted - proclaim that they are ‘official mechandise’, and in a very literal interpretation of the saying ‘there’s no ‘I’ in team’, also name the club as ‘Yeovl Town FC’.

The club said that “human error is natural”, adding “we’re not robots.”

They’re not the first team to make such a mistake, though - here are five more times football clubs have been left red-faced by spelling errors.

Montpellier take a ‘L’

Ligue 1 side Montpellier made the same mistake as Yeovil on an even greater scale back in 2017, when they said they were “victim of a logo error” that led to all their players’ shirts having the name spelt wrong on the badge - as ‘Montpelier’, missing an L.

Fans complained after realising the mistake, which affected all player-worn tops and replica shirts; the club had to apologise and gave supporters the opportunity to exchange faulty shirts. Some good came of the fiasco, though, with the misprints being gifted to the people of Montpelier, Vermont - the plan was for the shirts to be worn by students on the local high school’s football team before possibly being sold on.

Nightmare start for Rooney and kit man at Plymouth

Wayne Rooney dominated the headlines on the day of Plymouth Argyle’s first Championship fixture this season - his first competitive game managing the club - when they lost 4-0 to Sheffield Wednesday. However, he wasn’t the only one to have a bad day at the office as the club’s kitman was found to have misspelt two players’ names on their shirts. Former Premier League player Adam Forshaw’s name was spelt ‘Foreshaw’, while new signing Ibrahim Cissoko was also subject to an error. The 21-year-old joined on loan from Toulouse in the summer and it clearly wasn’t enough time for spellcheck to step in before the first game, when his shirt read ‘Issoko’.

Welcome to Forest… what’s your name again?

There’s no way to make a debutant feel welcome quite like spelling their name wrong, but unfortunately Nottingham Forest managed that. 21-year-old Murillo signed with the Premier League team the day before deadline day in 2023, but the club embarrassingly misspelt his name as ‘Murrillo’, with an extra R. It was far from an ideal start, but didn’t seem to dent the Brazilian’s efforts at the club at all. Supporters voted him Player of the Season at the end of the last campaign after he impressed with his efforts in the back line and contributions going forward, and has started all three of their games so far this season.

Even big names aren’t safe

Raheem Sterling has made headlines multiple times for moves between huge Premier League clubs - this summer it was to Arsenal from Chelsea, before that he was at Manchester City, and he moved there from Liverpool. The announcement of the move from Merseyside to Manchester didn’t go off without a hitch in an embarrassing error for whoever was manning City’s social media - as they jubilantly tweeted #WelcomeReheem! That was of course swiftly deleted - only to be replaced with #WelcomeRahe. They eventually managed to get his name right and he went on to win the Premier League four times with the club - perhaps Arsenal should have spelled his name wrong in their announcement last week.

A superstitious spelling error that has stuck for ten years

The name Casemiro will be fresh in Premier League fans’ minds for all the wrong reasons after his performance against Liverpool for Manchester United. What they might not know, though, is that his name has been spelled incorrectly for more than a decade. When the midfielder originally played for São Paulo in his native Brazil, his name - which in full is actually Carlos Henrique Casimiro - was misspelt on the back of his shirt with an E instead of an I. However, he felt he played so well in that game that he kept the new spelling for superstitious reasons.

“I said to them, 'Just leave it like that, as things are going well!'”

Based on some of his recent performances, perhaps fans will see him tinker with the spelling once again to bring about some better luck.