‘I almost punched my Liverpool team-mate who then threw arms within the dressing room’
Jamie Carragher has opened up on the time he almost came to blows with a Liverpool teammate following a heated on-field altercation, with the former defender admitting he ‘lost his head’
Jamie Carragher once admitted he nearly threw fists with ex-Liverpool team-mate Alvaro Arbeloa.
Arbeloa, who turned 42 on Friday (January 17), turned out for the Reds between 2007 and 2009. And it was during this period he nearly came to blows with the Liverpool legend.
After missing out on the Premier League crown to arch-foes Manchester United in May 2009, Rafa Benitez’s side faced off with West Brom and nicked a 2-0 victory that sent the Baggies into the Championship.
However, Carragher was keen to keep a clean sheet, which led him to clash with Arbeloa, sparking a bit of on-field drama that had their teammates scrambling to calm things down. “I was on a football pitch and nearly struck one of my own team-mates, or punched, Arbeloa.
“Now I don’t look back at that proud, but that was always going to happen at some stage or another, or the odd little thing in training, because you’re so intense,” he told Sky Sports back in 2020.
And he further opened up on the incident on The Overlap: “I had it a couple of times where I had to apologise in front of the dressing room. I nearly got into a fight with my own team-mate.
“He (Arbeloa) was going forward too much, I needed him to sit!
“So we nearly came to blows on the pitch then after the game you think ‘it was a bit much that,’ but I tried to apologise after the game and he (Arbeloa) threw his hands, so you lose your head again a little bit don’t you?
“But the next day the manager was like ‘no, you have to apologise in front of all the team,’ and sometimes you’ve just got to say sorry, and you just move on, forget it.”
After the incident, Arbeloa left Liverpool for Real Madrid, where he clinched two Champions League titles before taking charge of their U19 side.
Carragher, on the other hand, stayed loyal to Liverpool until retiring in 2013, cementing his status as an Anfield icon.
