“Think you are the big man?” This is what Raheem Sterling reportedly said to Joe Gomez after reuniting at England’s training base just 24 hours after a fractious Anfield meeting between their respective clubs.
The ensuing altercation naturally dominated the back pages for days after and for talkSPORT and Sky the heightened drama warranted discussion about little else. It seemed that everybody had a view on it, an incident that can be judged equally to be a highlight and lowlight of the season so far.
We can expect too that whenever Sterling and Gomez are sharing the same pitch together for the rest of their careers – either as adversaries in Manchester City and Liverpool shirts or as England team-mates – the flash-point will return to the fore, following the pair around like a criminal record and the reasons for this go far beyond the sensational nature of the falling out.
First and foremost, it is extremely rare for a squabble between two high-profile footballers that has occurred inside the ‘inner sanctum’ of a ground or training facility (in this instance it was a canteen) to be made so public.
We know it must go on of course: how can it not when the work environment in question is so competitive and pressurised and includes so many egos? Only usually we have to rely on salacious gossip, passed on knowingly in pubs or on forums intimating that Player A doesn’t get on with Player B or that a fracas took place.
Here, happening as it did in front of many witnesses and by probable virtue of it reaching the press it reached a much wider domain. In doing so it has become public property.
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A less pertinent factor – but still relevant when explaining why this momentary to-do will permeate for a lifetime – is that we have come to believe these days that intense club rivalries brought into the international set-up are a thing of the past.
How often do we inwardly wince at the sight of teams lining up ahead of a huge game all high-fiving and embracing one another, clearly friends, not foes.
In this regard the Sterling/Gomez incident acted as a welcome reminder that the animosity we feel as supporters is sometimes shared by the players. And that will be celebrated for some time to come.
That is not to suggest that we are under the misguided notion that players in the modern era aren’t capable of letting their emotions get the better of them, whether that be aimed at a team-mate or rival.
As recently as this September, Aston Villa’s Tyrone Mings and Anwar El Ghazi had a coming together, with the former incensed at the latter for his failure to track back.
Perhaps though the most famous example of team-mates having a set-to all kicked off in 2005 when Newcastle’s Lee Bowyer and Kieron Dyer exchanged blows on the St James’ Park pitch in front of 50,000 gob-smacked fans.
“When he was raining the punches in I thought, ‘You need to get on the weights because they aren’t hurting’, Dyer said years later before confirming a long-running rumour that manager Graeme Souness then offered them both out in the changing room. Unsurprisingly each declined.
Ten years prior to that memorable meltdown Graeme Le Saux lashed out at Blackburn team-mate David Batty in a European encounter in chilly Moscow. “There was no justification for my behaviour,” the left-back admitted before reasonably pinpointing his anger on an underachieving season for Rovers so soon after they had won the Premier League. Batty, for his part wiped at his face seeking blood but there was none to be seen.
There was, however, claret on view at the Emirates in 2008 when Arsenal strikers Emmanuel Adebayor and Nicklas Bendtner pushed and shoved for space in the penalty area during a corner then began pushing and shoving each other instead.
From this shocking spat it was the Dane who visibly came off the worse, nursing a cut across the bridge of his nose and this incident differs from the others too in not being a one-off flare-up that was soon-after extinguished.
Annoyed at Bendtner’s flouting of a ‘no trainers’ rule in the dressing room Adebayor began a grudge that lasted for all of their time in north London.
And speaking of long lasting feuds, unquestionably the most well-known is that of Andy Cole and Teddy Sheringham’s mutual lack of goodwill to one another despite the duo firing Manchester United to rarefied heights at the turn of the century. “I would rather sit down and have a cuppa with Neil Ruddock, who broke my leg in two places in 1996, than with Teddy Sheringham, who I’ve pretty much detested for the past 15 years,” Cole once wrote in a newspaper column.
Seeing several years of Sheringham and Cole harmoniously link up on the pitch it was difficult to square up the fact that they disliked one another so much and accepting this bodes well for any future England contests that feature Sterling and Gomez.
Because though the word coming out of the England camp is that the bust-up has been ‘put to bed’ we cannot know for sure if all the ill-feeling has been put aside. If that is not so then surely the defender and winger are professional enough to still get the job done.
Because the bottom line is that in any work place – or indeed any environment – there will always be two people who just don’t get along. “We are like a family,” Gareth Southgate said last week referring to his squad.
And we all know what families are like.