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Football is and always has been a team game. No player can single-handedly drive a team to success and it is a known fact. Even the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have needed their team-mates to help them out time and again.
It is a sheer delight when the team chemistry works out well. In fact, teams have performed better collectively than solely due to individual quality.
Some highly reputed players have struggled with their team-mates
With big players comes big egos and a clash of opinions. As much a blessing as it is to have a team of high-quality players, it is a tough task to bring them on the same page.
In the recent past, world-class players have struggled to get along with their team-mates and it is a situation a manager hates to be in. Let's have a look at some high quality players who have not had a great relationship with their team-mates:
#6 Lothar Matthaus & Stefan Effenberg (Germany)
Both Lothar Matthaus and Stefan Effenberg were regularly involved in playing alongside each other for Bayern Munich and the German national team. The duo formed a partnership in midfield and on the pitch it never looked like they had problems with each other.
Among the two, Effenberg had always been a controversial figure throughout his career. He once demeaned Matthaus in the press, calling him "a big mouth and a quitter". If that wasn't enough, in his autobiography, there was a chapter titled "What Lothar Matthaus knows about football", which comprised of a blank page.
Matthaus also didn't sit back on the chances he got. The former Bayern Munich captain publicly insisted that Effenberg should be sold by the Bavarian club claiming the latter had lost his touch. This came following the German club's poor run in 2001. In the end, it was Matthaus who left the club first with Effenberg lasting two more years than him.
#5 Zlatan Ibrahimovic & Rafael van der Vaart (Ajax)
Zlatan Ibrahimovic rose to fame during his time at Ajax and it coincided with when academy graduate Rafael van der Vaart also joined the senior team. Both players possessed immense quality and were tipped to achieve great things.
Van der Vaart was considered the best player at Ajax then and with Zlatan's arrival the Dutchman was shifted to the wings. With two big egos clashing, a rift was bound to happen. In an international match against Sweden in 2004, Zlatan was accused of injuring Van der Vaart on purpose.
Following the incident, the Swedish striker was sold to Juventus two weeks later. During an interview in 2018, Rafael van der Vaart made the following comments:
“At that time we were both young and I was the best player in Ajax. He came to the club and believed that he was the best player at Ajax. Back then he did not act like he does now and I think he was a bit jealous.
"I did not have really big problems with him. It was just two egos converging in one place. I think I was a bigger problem for him than he was for me."
Van der Vaart went on to play for clubs like Real Madrid and Tottenham Hotspur before retiring. Meanwhile, Zlatan is still going strong at the age of 40, plying his trade for Serie A giants AC Milan.
#4 Teddy Sheringham and Andy Cole (England)
Manchester United had some fine strikers during Sir Alex Ferguson's time as their manager. Teddy Sheringham and Andy Cole were two of those wonderful strikers at the Scotsman's disposal.
Both of them did well on the pitch but the truth was, they never got along well with each other. It all started when Cole was making his England debut against Uruguay in 1995 and came on for Sheringham. Instead of giving Cole a handshake or something, Sheringham snubbed him, making the former more nervous given the occasion.
This did not go down well with Cole as he remembered the incident and kept his distance from Sheringham for a long time. The feud between them went on for 24 years before they buried the hatchet in 2019.
#3 William Gallas & Kolo Toure (Arsenal)
Arsene Wenger had some quality centre-backs during his time as Arsenal manager and William Gallas and Kolo Toure were two of the best. Unfortunately for the French manager, they struggled to get along.
The tension between them was such that they hardly spoke to each other. For a team to have a good defense, it is necessary for their defenders to communicate, which never happened in this case. After a certain point, it became toxic and unbearable for the team and that's when Toure, the younger among the two, decided to leave the Gunners.
In an interview in 2010, the African player made the following statements:
"When you play with somebody and you don't even talk to each on the pitch, it's really difficult. We didn't talk to each other all. One of us had to go and it was me. I didn't want to put the team in a difficult position, so I was the one who said I wanted to go.''
Toure left for Manchester City in 2009 and Gallas too left a year later to join Arsenal's arch-rivals Tottenham Hotspur. It would have been fantastic for Arsenal had both these defenders got along well.
#2 John Terry and Wayne Bridge (England)
Roman Abramovich's takeover of Chelsea in 2003 brought a revolution for the London club. It saw the signing of Wayne Bridge from Southampton and the rise of John Terry as one of the best centre-backs in the Premier League then.
Terry was the captain of both Chelsea and England back then. With Manchester City desperately trying to sign him in 2009, the Englishman earned himself a new contract. Meanwhile, Wayne Bridge was doing decently well as Chelsea's left-back before leaving for Manchester City in the winter of 2009.
Bridge was in a relationship with French model Vanessa Perroncel until 2009. In the winter of 2010 rumours were circulating that Terry was having an affair with Vanessa shortly after she broke up with Wayne Bridge.
This raised a lot of questions about how morally wrong it was from Terry. Understandably, it did not go down well with Bridge.
When Chelsea faced Manchester City in 2010, Bridge refused to shake hands with Terry for that very reason. He was well supported by his City teammates as this event damaged Terry's reputation massively.
#1 Mauro Icardi & Maxi Lopez (Argentina)
Mauro Icardi and Maxi Lopez were team-mates at Sampdoria who apparently had a close relationship then. However, things between both the Argentine nationals went south as it involved a love triangle with Wanda Nara.
It is said that Icardi had an affair with Wanda Nara when the latter was with Maxi Lopez. It was quite a back-stabbing move from Icardi. If that wasn't enough, the Argentine striker got the names of Lopez's kids tattooed on his arm.
Later in 2014 when Icardi played for Inter Milan and Lopez played for Sampdoria, the two teams met in what was known as the "Wanda Derby." In 2016, Icardi opened up about the events:
"I was a friend of the couple, an acquaintance, and it was all very normal. After that, Wanda split up and we kept in contact, and it just happened. I fell in love, that's something you should judge solely on its own merits. But [López] was not my best friend, nothing like that. We were colleagues in Sampdoria, nothing else."
As their relationship deteriorated, Icardi and Lopez quickly went from being team-mates to hating each other. In a dramatic turn of events, Wanda Nara has now separated herself from Icardi.
