When writing about feuds, there is only one manager to ask. “I don’t know where to start,” Neil Warnock, the Sheffield United warlord, said. “They’re too numerous for me to pick one.”
If seeking quality, not quantity, in tales of great manager-player bust-ups, the extraordinary incident in 2003 between two of football’s most famous figures is the obvious place to begin. During a dressing-room tirade after a Manchester United defeat by Arsenal, Sir Alex Ferguson lashed out at a stray boot that flew up and hit David Beckham above the eye. Beckham required stitches and their relationship, it seems, could not be repaired as the midfield player left for Real Madrid soon after.
John Beck, the unorthodox former Cambridge United manager, had a fist fight on the sidelines with his star striker, Steve Claridge. After Nigel Jemson, the former Nottingham Forest forward, hit a cross over the bar, his manager, Brian Clough, punched him in the stomach.
Long before food met feud in the Old Trafford “Battle of the Buffet”, savouries were unsavoury. When in charge of Grimsby Town in 1996, Brian Laws was so upset by a loss to Luton Town that he threw a plate of chicken wings at his Italian import, Ivano Bonetti, who suffered a fractured cheekbone. When he was at West Ham United, Harry Redknapp threw a plate of sandwiches over Don Hutchison.
Mido, the Tottenham Hotspur and Egypt striker, was given a six-month international ban this year after reacting badly to being substituted during the African Cup of Nations. “Why are you taking me off?” Mido asked the coach, Hassan Shehata. “You are nothing but a donkey.” Shehata cuttingly parried with: “No, it is you who is the donkey.”