Fisticuffs! Five of the best teammate bust-ups, including Joey Barton, Zlatan and more
Fisticuffs! Five of the best teammate bust-ups, including Joey Barton, Zlatan and more
Passion in football is fine, but occasionally - just occasionally - it spills over into something a bit more violent (and possibly entertaining)
Keith Gillespie's exclusive extracts in today's Daily Mirror reminded the world of the somewhat competitive nature of the football dressing room.
His recounting of waking up in hospital after Alan Shearer had sparked him out in Dublin had got us thinking.
What were the best teammate dust-ups?
Whether on the pitch,
on the training ground, hidden away in the changing rooms or on a
flight to an away game, here's our best fist (sorry) of a top five:
David Batty v Graeme Le Saux
Blackburn were champions of England (if you're under 20 then
you may need to go and read a book at this point) and enjoying their
first-ever Champions League campaign.
I say enjoying, they were 3-0 down away to Spartak Moscow and heading out of Europe.
"Before
the match I told my players they will be playing against 11 guys ready
to fight for each other for 90 minutes... not with each other, "
revealed Spartak coach Oleg Romantsev after the game.
Quite the wit, that Oleg.
You'd
probably back a snarling David Batty in this encounter, although Graeme
Le Saux gives it a good go before the handsome Tim Sherwood restores
some order to proceedings.
Also worth noting is the majestic
gallop of a lionesque Colin Hendry, arriving just in time a provide an
air of calm (and a mane of golden beauty).
Zlatan Ibrahimovic v Oguchi Onyewu
Zlatan: Not quite so close with 'the Gooch' as with D-Becks
Rex Features
Zlatan's superb autobiography 'I am Zlatan' was so revealing
that many of its stories barely even registered amid the Guardiola
furore and his comments about Messi.
Among the lesser revelations,
the sort which would have been headline-making in any other
footballers' book, was his fight to the death with American defender
Oguchi 'the gooch' Onyewu while at Milan.
Ibrahimovic
revealed that the pair "wanted to destroy each other" in the fight,
which began after the mild-mannered Swede had lunged in on Onyewu during
a training session.
"I'm not talking about a small row," Ibrahimovic wrote. "It was like life and death."
Well, nobody died, but only after they were separated did Zlatan discover that he'd had one of his ribs broken.
Arjen Robben v Franck Ribery
This looks like a healthy working relationship
Alex Grimm
Things got ugly for Arjen Robben as he brawled with teammate Ribery in the half-time break of a Champions League quarter-final.
Fortunately it was only against Real Madrid, so their mid-way brawl was no distraction from the task in hand.
The
spat began on the pitch with your conventional disgruntled 'you should
have passed it to me' gesticulating and ended with Ribery swinging a
punch at his Dutch teammate and then their Bayern colleagues dragging
the wingers apart.
The recriminations came the next
day when both were hauled in front of the club heirarchy and then the
subsequent denial/no comment from the press office which serves just as
well as an admission:
"Whatever happens in the locker room stays there. We will not be making any further comment."
Which translates from German as, "he chinned him".
Joey Barton v Ousmane Dabo
Joey Barton Ousmane Dabo
Sunday Mirror/Getty
Not your average training-ground scrap because
Dabo was left hospitalised by Barton. Of course, the Frenchman was a
'pussy' for calling the police in.
Barton was
arrested and questioned by Greater Manchester Police after the incident,
then bailed until August and later charged with assault.
After
changing his initial not guilty plea to a guilty one, Joey was
sentenced to a four-month suspended prison sentence plus 200 hours of
community service and ordered to pay £3,000 compensation and Dabo's
court costs.
The ever-vigilant FA issued him with a a violent conduct charge too. They didn't really have a choice, you'd say.
Lee Bowyer v Kieron Dyer
On a rare occasion Kieron Dyer ventured out from
the treatment room, he was on the end of a 3-0 shoeing when Newcastle
hosted Aston Villa.
Understandably, the Magpies
weren't too pleased about this, but with ten minutes to go, a couple of
them lost the plot and started scrapping.
The other party was placid, harmless soul Lee Bowyer, who was laughably restrained by peacemaker-in-chief Gareth Barry.
Steven Carr tugged away at Dyer (snarf!) but the video became legendary and the pair were forced to apologise on television.
That
couldn't help them escape the long arm of the law though, and in front
of a 52,000 capacity crowd, both were sent off for the fracas before
Bowyer was banned for seven games and fined £30,000 by the FA.
He
was fined a further six weeks' wages by the Magpies, around £250,000 and
was then charged by the police with using threatening behaviour.
After pleading guilty at Newcastle Magistrates' Court, he was fined a further £600 and ordered to pay £1,000 costs.
A costly scrap.
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