They say that we come alone and we shall go alone. This is the eternal truth. However, during the time in the middle—the time we spend on this earth—we are rarely ever alone.
There are friends, there are siblings and cousins, there is family. There is that one person you love beyond measure and there is that one friendship that eclipses every other acquaintance in magnitude.
However, this is the rosy stuff—and life is not all sunshine and roses.
There is not a single person on this planet who, in her/his lifetime, hasn’t displeased anybody. And that is the first step of any long-standing feud. In football, there are some great friendships, but there are some even worse rivalries that even borders on hatred.
While we can’t say for sure what line differentiates the two—and, frankly, we will just not go there—we can surely compile a list of the longest-standing feuds between footballers that will be remembered for a long time to come…
Pepe and Lionel Messi
El Clasicos are always heated encounters. It is not just a football game— it is a game between two ideologies, two cultures. So it is natural to see and feel hostility in a clash of such high importance and in these moments of fire, we find some players burning each other with acts that border on enmity.
One such individual clash is between Lionel Messi and Pepe.
The Real Madrid man is infamous for his hot temper, something that precedes him and makes people think that he is nothing more than just a thug despite the fact that he hasn’t seen a red card for Real Madrid since November 2011.
And it was these heated face-offs that became the beginning of the rift.
As Lionel Messi was lying on the ground, Pepe, in a vulgar act, stamped on Messi’s hand—and it was intentional. In the next leg, Messi was seen pushing Pepe off the ball, for which the Argentine earned a rare yellow card.
You know the Pepe vs Messi is a thing when someone as calm as Lionel Messi gets angry.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Pep Guardiola
This is not your average rivalry. In fact, this is something else. Something which can’t be explained with mere words. However, we will try to do so. After all, it is Zlatan Ibrahimovic we are talking about.
It all started when Pep Guardiola signed him from Inter and then on the very first day gave him a lecture about how humility is the core on which Barcelona is built, something which we saw whenever Xavi blamed the pitch after a Barca loss.
The Spaniard ordered the Swede to not drive in fancy cars and bring his Audi to training, just like the other Barca players.
As the concept of good music is alien to Justin Bieber fans, so is the notion of being an obedient boy for Zlatan Ibrahimovic. And it was only a matter of time when he exploded, and it was so bad that the former Juventus forward carved out an entire autobiography explaining his enmity with Pep Guardiola.
Jose Mourinho and the rest of the world
We wanted to make this a one-on-one collision. However, we got confused with Jose Mourinho because the list of people he has a problem with is just about as many as the population of Earth, and so we decided to use the ‘rest of the world’ tag.
From calling Wenger a voyeur to labelling Benitez as a fat Spanish waiter, from saying that Ranieri is lazy to opining that Iker Casillas was the mole in Real Madrid’s dressing room, the Portuguese has had his fair share of rivalry that bordered, and still does, on unhealthy obsession.
And then there are referees: his eternal foes.
One can scour the deepest and darkest caves on Earth and find a Unicorn, but one can’t find a press conference where Mourinho didn’t blame a referee for a 50-50 decision that went against him.
Marco Materazzi and Zinedine Zidane
The most iconic image of the World Cup 2006 wasn’t Fabio Cannavaro lifting the trophy, it was of Zinedine Zidane head-butting Marco Materazzi after the latter made an insulting remark to the legendary French midfielder.
France weren’t expected to do much in the World Cup, however, with Zidane at his brilliant best, France found themselves closer to the trophy than any other team. But it all changed with one rash act from the maestro.
The feud was alive for a long time before they, according to the former Italian defender, had a ‘man-to-man’ moment while the former’s visit to Jose Mourinho when the Portuguese managed Real Madrid.
Apparently, he apologised to Zidane and requested him to let go of it. Zidane responded positively as he said it was not a problem anymore before shaking hands with the Italian and getting along with daily chores.
They might have made peace now, but this feud shall forever be etched in the history book for it took birth at the grandest stage of them all.
Dani Alves and Cristiano Ronaldo
These two do not like each other—and they have made no attempts at hiding that. In their most recent meeting prior to the Clasico, Cristiano Ronaldo snubbed Dani Alves because he wasn’t pleased with some of the comments the Brazilian made.
An unfazed Dani Alves then responded: "In Zurich I went to say hello out of good manners, but he [Cristiano] didn't want to speak. He was angry, but it's not a problem. I sleep like a baby, I couldn't care less.”
It all started with tweets. Dani Alves is known for his outspoken nature and didn’t hold back when trolling Cristiano Ronaldo. And when the former United winger was asked about Alves’ constant taunts, he replied: “It’s normal. Because who ever talks about Cris gets the cover page the next day!”
Alves didn’t take these words too kindly as he did what every great keyboard warrior does and posted a photo that displayed the number of trophies he won with Barca.
Gerard Pique and Real Madrid
The term hate is a very strong one and something I rarely use to describe a feeling unless it becomes an absolute necessity. In this case, the necessity has arisen: Gerard Pique hates Real Madrid. And he is proud of that.
He has made many comments on Twitter about his apparent hatred of Real Madrid. If we are to enlist them here, our servers wouldn’t be able to survive the load. Hence, we will just share the most popular ones.
He once said Madrid to “go f**k themselves.”
“I always want Madrid to lose; that’s rivalry we’ve always had.” - Gerard Pique, 2015
“I wore a Buffon shirt during the 14-15 UCL semi-final [between Madrid and Juventus].” - Gerard Pique, 2015
“For me, getting whistled at the Bernabeu is like a symphony.” - Gerard Pique, 2015
Safe to say that he hates Real Madrid more than Diego Costa hates playing fairly.
