The team-mates who absolutely hated the living daylights out of each other

There’s always one.

No matter how tight your Tuesday night five-a-side team is, you know there’s at least one of them you’d like to bump into in a dark alley and tell them what you really think of them.

Or just post some derogatory, libellous claims about him on social media.

And it’s no different in the professional world, take our word for it.

They might po-face their way through post-match interviews like butter wouldn’t melt, but they’re just men.

Pathetic, squalid, little men. Just like the rest of us.

But somehow when they fall out it’s all the sweeter. And here are a few of our favourite, legendary hatreds.

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Jens Lehmann & Oliver Kahn (Germany)

The war of words between these two goalkeeping greats was bitter, puerile and pathetic. In other words, the best kind of war of words there is. Jens just about wins it for stooping to slag off Oliver’s barmaid girlfriend. That jibe formally ended niceties between the pair and rendered any training ground chit-chat utterly superfluous.

Edmundo & Romario (Brazil & Vasco da Gama)

Edmundo’s goat was got by his sometime Brazil team-mate affixing a caricature of him and his missus outside the lavs in his discotheque. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the naughty boys had been kept apart, but some sadist at Vasco da Gama decided to sign Romario and play him as Edmundo’s strike-partner. What larks.

Lothar Matthaus & Jurgen Klinsmann (Germany)

This one got all political. It started with conspiracy theories that Klinsmann was canvassing Berti Vogts in an attempt to unseat Matthaus as German captain and ended with stories allegedly planted in the German press calling into question Klinsmann’s sexuality. Grim, seedy, gripping stuff.

Ruud van Nistelrooy & Patrick Kluivert (Holland)

Ruud didn’t like Patrick’s bunga bunga lifestyle one bit, so he did what any self-respecting man would. He dobbed him in to the boss. Poor old Dick Advocaat (bless him) tried his best to make things work between the two of them, but it wasn’t to be. “It’s not working with Ruud and me up front,’ said Kluivert. ‘I should play on my own.”

Ruud van Nistelrooy & Cristiano Ronaldo (Man United)

Ruud was, it turns out, a bit of an old prude. He didn’t like Kluivert’s party antics and he certainly didn’t hold much truck with Cristiano Ronaldo’s goosing around in training. So he nobbled him. Right in front of Sir Alex, who’d developed a special fondness for the boy and, so, subsequently, told Ruud to sling it.

Ruud van Nistelrooy & Raul Bravo (Real Madrid)

Bravo heinously provoked Ruud in training – by breathing excessively or walking too quickly or something – and Ruud set about him with that wild-eyed look in his eye. Luckily Robinho was on hand to hold back the attack which, to be honest, tells you all you need to know about how tough the Dutchman is.

Teddy Sheringham & Andy Cole (Man United)

For anyone watching it must have looked like these two were just having a jolly nice time when they were doing all that goalscoring and treble-winning at Old Trafford at the turn of the century. But they were having us all for fools. For fools! “I’ve loathed him personally for 15 years,” says Cole. And all because of one absent handshake allegedly. Tragic scenes.

Eric Wynalda & John Harkes (USA)

It’s three months until the World Cup and as captain of your national team, it’s your job to foment an atmosphere of trust and togetherness ahead of the big event. Everyone knows you do that by necking shots on a dentist chair or going paintballing. You don’t do that by bonking your star striker’s wife. Shame on you John Harkes. Really.

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