Over the years, several controversies have surrounded Liverpool stars. One former player has shared anecdotes from a memorable night out.
Manager Rafa Benitez wouldn’t have predicted any problems when Liverpool left for a warm-weather training camp in Portugal in February 2007 in preparation for a Champions League semifinal matchup with Barcelona.
How wrong, oh, was he. The trip has become legendary in the past due to the notorious altercation between Craig Bellamy and John Arne Riise, in which the former player struck his teammate with a golf club.
However, Bellamy reveals in an interview with Gary Neville on The Overlap, in association with Sky Bet, that a lot more occurred that same evening. Bellamy highlights his version of events, detailing the wild night out and the aftermath the following morning.
“We had a double-floor room with a downstairs kitchen, and as I was about to enter my hotel room, the players were coming back. They all steamed into our room and trashed it,” Bellamy said to The Overlap. “In the morning, Steve Finnan enters my room and tells me that Pako (Ayestarán) and Rafa (Benítez) are downstairs and they would like to see you. There are plates all over the place when I go downstairs. He asks me to tell him what happened as he looks around. I was honest with him; I was unable to escape this one.
“I thought it was alright – believe it or not – because there was a madder story before it. Jerzy Dudek was out in the evening that same night. He was told to leave the bar and wouldn’t leave. They brought security in and then brought the police in. As he was being wrestled by the police, he headbutted a security officer, and he had to be put in a riot van.
“That night, Rafa had to go into the police station, get Jerzy out, and then Riise had gone to see him, and he had to deal with me. I was thinking I might’ve gotten away with this one, but no – it was bad.”
Indeed. Bellamy later celebrated his goal for Liverpool at Camp Nou with a golf swing in an attempt to diffuse the situation somewhat. He does recognise the ridiculousness of the incident, too, stating that he took things too far in his argument with Riise, which escalated over the course of that ill-fated day.
“I’m quite embarrassed about this – this is not a good moment at all,” Bellamy said. “But I understand that I have to answer that – because I have to own it. It’s a ridiculously pathetic act that it’d be unfair for me to not talk about it, and I’m not proud when I have to talk about it, but I have to own it.”
“I knocked on his [Riise’s] door, no answer, I knocked on the door again and he leaves it on the latch – he thinks it’s Daniel Agger, and he goes back to bed. I came in, turned the light on, swore a hell of a lot at him. I smacked him across the legs – which is still not a good thing to, but there was no smacking across the head or anything like that.
“Then he got into the corner, got the sheets and bedding around him, and I said, ‘if you ever speak to me like that in front of people again, I’m telling you now’ and escalated what I was saying. Then it started turning, because when I was drunk. It was the most insane things ever.”
