Five of football's greatest feuds
Wilder and Bamford have made up to hopefully transform Sheffield United's fortunes, but their small tiff was just the latest in a long list of football break-ups
Words: David Taylor
Patrick Bamford versus Christopher Wilder; the muppet from Leeds versus a self-love practitioner from Sheffield; versus no more! One of English football’s seemingly least-likely collaborations has come to pass, with Bamford signing for the Blades until at least January. If he can stay fit and rediscover his great hold-up play, then we have a winner. If he can’t, then it’s only seven weeks of wasted wages, and let’s be honest: we’ve had plenty of those already this season.
We all thought there was no love lost between the former Leeds forward and United’s manager, with both outspoken in their own special ways and unlikely to retract what they’d said. Turns out, after a couple of phone calls, an expired contract, and a desperate need for something – anything – up front, Chris and Pat are best buds after all.
It’s a good example of the contrast between football’s professionals and enthusiasts. It’s not that pros can’t also be fans, but there’s a significant difference in decision-making when the thing you enjoy is also your job. While we can spend (or waste) time getting riled up by the words and actions of rival players and managers, the professionals, on the whole, need to remain somewhat disconnected from that side of the game.
That being said, there have been some famous footballing moments when professionalism was thrown out of the window so far that there was no chance of ever recovering it. While we wait to see if the Wilder/Bamford bromance blossoms, here are some of the game’s most famous bust-ups, with varying degrees of reconciliation.
Brian Clough and Don Revie
“Well, I might as well tell you now. You lot may all be internationals and have won all the domestic honours there are to win under Don Revie. But as far as I’m concerned, the first thing you can do for me is to chuck all your medals, and all your caps, and al your pots and all your pans into the biggest fucking dustbin you can find, because you’ve never won any of them fairly. You’ve done it all by bloody cheating.”
So goes one of the most impactful scenes from 2009’s The Damned United, centred around Brian Clough’s ill-fated 44-day tenure as manager of league champions Leeds. Clough had always been an outspoken critic of Don Revie and his… agricultural Leeds side, despite the Whites winning two First Division titles and an FA Cup under the man from Middlesbrough.
On the day Clough was sacked by the Leeds board, the two managers met for an interview on Yorkshire TV, leading to the most 1970s live broadcast argument ever committed to film. You’d argue Clough had the last laugh: widely seen as the best manager England never had, compared to Revie’s unsuccessful and ultimately disgraced time in charge of the national team. Turns out, when it comes to winning, the how is as important as the what.
Wayne Bridge and John Terry
We could probably fill a whole article with John Terry’s exploits: from his FA ban for racially abusing Anton Ferdinand, to his “Ape Kids Club” NFT collection losing 90 per cent of its value a month after launch and leading to a legal intervention from the Premier League for trademark infringement, the multiple title winner’s name has appeared in more than just the sport pages.
The most famous altercation, however, is undeniably with his former Chelsea and England teammate, Wayne Bridge. The rumour was that Terry had conducted an affair with Bridge’s partner. The truth seems to be that Bridge and Vanessa Perroncel had gone their separate ways after the left-back’s move to Manchester City, and Terry had remained friends with Perroncel, regularly visiting her and her three-year-old son. Perroncel says, to this day, that nothing happened between her and Terry, with printed apologies and legal documents to support this.
This didn’t stop the rumour mill, though, and led to bad blood between Bridge and ‘Mr Chels’. To the country’s classically salacious football media, this was a story of a club captain betraying his brother-in-arms. Bridge’s Man City teammates wore “Team Bridge” shirts. The papers went after Perroncel mercilessly. Terry’s wife Toni was followed to Dubai by paparazzi. It was all very 2000s.
The full story is worth reading here. The rigmarole carried on for months, everyone had an opinion, Terry was removed as England captain, and, most famously, Bridge refused to shake his hand when the pair met on the pitch a few weeks later, with City winning at Stamford Bridge for the first time in 17 years. Fantastic drama.
According to sources, the two still don’t speak, despite living a stone’s throw away from each other. We’ll never know the full story, but Bridge certainly deserves to be remembered more for his football than for a handshake (or lack thereof).
Frank Rijkaard and Rudi Völler
An on-pitch feud that led to the creation of some of the nastiest football photos ever captured, Frank Rijkaard’s perfect gob missiles into Rudi Völler’s beautiful locks remains one of the game’s most notorious moments – you’d be hard pressed to find it missing from any Nick Hancock/Jason Manford/Jamie Theakston/Peter Crouch (delete as appropriate) Christmas compilation DVD.
The anger washed away down the drain with Rijkaard’s Head and Shoulders, though, as the two appeared on an advert making light of the situation soon after, and have been spotted at games together since.
Mick McCarthy and Roy Keane
A feud so good there’s a film coming out about it. The famously level-headed Roy Keane left/was kicked out of the Republic of Ireland’s 2002 World Cup warm-up camp after what by all accounts was a monumental bust-up with then-manager Mick McCarthy.
Citing an unprofessional set-up, poor preparation and unambitious expectations (and first-class plane tickets for FAI officials), Captain Keane had had enough not long after touching down on the beautiful Pacific island of Saipan, but decided to stay for a little longer to see if things improved. After an interview was published back in Ireland detailing Keane’s dissatisfaction with the situation, McCarthy stormed into the dressing room to challenge his captain and claim he had faked an injury to get out of Ireland’s play-off second leg. Keane then unleashed a targeted monologue that would make Peter Capaldi’s character in The Thick of It blush (“You can stick it up your bollocks” is my favourite line) and was sent home.
A Keane-less Ireland made it through the group stage and only lost to Spain on penalties. Despite Keane’s provocative antics, the FAI released a report in the aftermath agreeing with many of his complaints. Keane was brought back into the Irish fold the year after with the appointment of Brian Kerr as the new national boss.
Antonio Conte and Thomas Tuchel
Who would’ve thought that a man who told his players he would kill them after they gave the opposition a chance on goal, and once said that he considers defeat “to be a state of virtual death”, would be involved in some professional spats? Antonio Conte has never been one to mince his words, calling Mourinho a “little man” and answering a question on a lack of financial support after his first season at Inter by saying that “we had to eat dung for months and got zero protection.” But it was actions speaking louder than words when, after his Spurs side managed a 2-2 draw with former team Chelsea, Conte and Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel seemed stuck together when a macho handshake turned into a game of hand chicken.
It had been a tense match: both managers had been warned of overdoing it on the touchline, and this was the rather silly natural conclusion to the 90-minute saga.
Both men brushed it off quickly afterwards, with Conte in a good mood post-match. “I think he enjoyed it as well. It was nothing bad,” he told Sky Sports. “It’s Premier League football and the two managers got involved today, because both of us were fighting for our teams.”
For Tuchel, handshakegate came down to a lack of respect. “I thought when we shake hands you looked in each other eyes, he [Conte] had a different opinion. It was not necessary but a lot of things were not necessary,” he told Sky Sports. Similar to the Italian, however, the now-England manager found it easy to move on, saying that “there are no hard feelings. I feel like it was a fair tackle from him and a fair tackle from me.”
It goes to show that all’s fair in love and football. Here’s hoping the Wilder/Bamford love-in is as successful as Tuchel’s Three Lions.
Honourable mentions:
Zinedine Zidane vs Marco Materazzi
Billy Sharp vs Gary Madine
Luis Suárez vs bits of Branislav Ivanović and Giorgio Chiellini