During the 2003 Champions League quarter-final against Real Madrid, John O’Shea played as "S’hea", and in 2006 former goalkeeper Tomasz Kuszczak had "Zuszczak" on his back for a Carling Cup tie with Crewe:

While Kuszczak is admittedly a fairly challenging name to spell, anyone that's ever written (or ironed-on) under pressure will tell you it's often the subtle spellings that are the hardest to get right.

Take Sunderland midfielder James McClean, and spot the minor mistake, also from the opening weekend of this season's Premier League:

Your other common or garden spelling mistake is the transposing of letters. Victims have included occasional footballer David "Betnley" Bentley in his Blackburn days:

...and Manchester City's unused reserve team substitute Roque Santa Cruz:

Sometimes unfortunate letters are left out entirely. Take poor former Liverpool midfielder Javier Mascherano:

Crystal Palace event went so far as to misspell their own name on their shirt for the 2004/05 season:

Spelling errors are by no means the exclusive preserve of football. The NBA's Jerry Stackhouse once took to the court as a Washington Wizard as "Stackhuose":

There's the wonderful story of cricketer Ashley Giles, who was dubbed "King of Spain" on a mug produced by Warwickshire. The initial plan was to call him "King of spin".

Even our glorious Olympic Games were not immune to word-based slip-ups. Tickets for the cycling time trial event gave their name as the more homely "time trail", which sounds like mid-afternoon filler programming on BBC2 :

Some "mistakes" are a little too good to be true. It's hardly Galatasaray v Fenerbahce, but Blackpool and Preston North End aren't particularly fond of one another. This was the sign at Deepdale ahead of their game in 2007: