Roy Keane’s revenge on Erling Haaland’s father

Roy Keane is one of the rud­est foot­ballers in the his­to­ry of foot­ball. The Irish­man torched the mid­field for 13 con­sec­u­tive sea­sons at Alex Fer­gu­son’s Man­ches­ter Unit­ed, earn­ing a record 13 red cards.

In 1997, Keane suf­fered a seri­ous injury in a game against Leeds — a torn cru­ci­ate lig­a­ment. He stum­bled unsuc­cess­ful­ly and fell with­out con­tact with the oppos­ing play­ers. Alf-Inge Haa­land, the father of cur­rent Man­ches­ter City star Erling Haa­land, leaned over Keane, who was in pain, and shout­ed accu­sa­tions of sim­u­la­tion in his face.

He jumped with all his might into the knee Haa­land: the injury was so seri­ous that the Nor­we­gian nev­er played anoth­er full match on the field. Doc­tors not­ed: What saved Haa­land from a direct frac­ture was that his leg was in the air.

Vin­nie Jones is the star of Guy Ritchie’s cult film Lock, Stock and Two Smok­ing Bar­rels (and more!), and a for­mer foot­ball play­er. On the field, Jones was an aggres­sive defend­er nick­named “The Hatch­et.” He became cap­tain of the Welsh nation­al team and won the FA Cup, and went into cin­e­ma after retir­ing at the age of 33.

Jones was not a top defend­er, but he had a tough style: Vin­ny jumped into crazy tack­les, kicked oppo­nents lying on the lawn, and once dur­ing a match he grabbed and tight­ly squeezed Paul Gas­coigne’s gen­i­tals.

“It was very painful. I was quite afraid of this game, because I was new to big-time foot­ball. As we entered the field, I felt heavy breath­ing on the back of my head. “Hel­lo, Vin­nie,” was all I could squeak out,” Gas­coigne recalled many years lat­er.

Materazzi and the famous header from Zidane

The 2006 FIFA World Cup final end­ed in scan­dal. In extra time, with the score 1:1, French nation­al team cap­tain Zine­dine Zidane hit Mar­co Mat­er­azzi with his head in the chest — in a non-play­ing moment.

Zidane received a red card and the French lost the final on penal­ties. It sub­se­quent­ly emerged that Mat­er­azzi had insult­ed Zidane’s sis­ter.

“Cannibal” bite of Luis Suarez

Luis Suarez is a for­mer star of Liv­er­pool, Barcelona and the Uruguay nation­al team. The strik­er became famous not only for his goals scored, but also for his extrav­a­gant actions on the field. Suarez showed his first can­ni­bal­is­tic ten­den­cies back in Liv­er­pool, when he bit Branislav Ivanovic on the hand in a match against Chelsea.

At the 2014 World Cup, Suarez went fur­ther: in a game with Italy, he severe­ly bit defend­er Gior­gio Chielli­ni on the shoul­der. The teeth went so deep that Suarez grabbed them — it was not only the Ital­ian who was in pain.

​​​​​​The football player who killed an owl with a kick

In 2011, dur­ing a Colom­bian cham­pi­onship match, an owl acci­den­tal­ly flew into the sta­di­um and land­ed on the lawn. Defend­er of the los­ing team, Luis Moreno, kicked the bird out of bounds, anger­ing the fans.

Mourinho and the sneaky poke in the eye

In August 2011, Barcelona won the return match against Real Madrid, win­ning the Span­ish Super Cup. After the match, a brawl broke out, and Madrid coach Jose Mour­in­ho got involved. He snuck up on Jose Guardi­o­la’s assis­tant coach Tito Vilano­va and poked him in the eye.

Luis Adriano’s sneaky goal: no Fair Play!

In the group stage match of the Cham­pi­ons League of the 2012/2013 sea­son between Nord­sjæl­land and Shakhtar, with the score 1:0 in favor of the Dan­ish club, the min­ers’ for­ward Luis Adri­ano scored a very ugly goal.

Accord­ing to the unspo­ken rules of fair play, Shakhtar gave the ball to the oppo­nent after break­ing the rules. The min­ers’ play­er kicked it out to the Nord­s­jael­land defend­ers, but Adri­ano over­took every­one and equal­ized the score. Shakhtar won with a score of 5:2, but Adri­ano cel­e­brat­ed the “das­tard­ly” goal alone, and UEFA dis­qual­i­fied the Brazil­ian for one match.

In 1995, Eric Can­tona received a red card in a game for Man­ches­ter Unit­ed against Crys­tal Palace and went to the dress­ing room. Along the way, he hit per­haps his most famous shot—and it did­n’t hit the ball.

Fight in the Moscow region: CSKA battle against Saturn

In August 2004, CSKA fought for the cham­pi­onship with sev­er­al teams at once — the dif­fer­ence between first and fifth place was only 4 points. In the match with Sat­urn near Moscow, CSKA was only sat­is­fied with vic­to­ry, but the ball did not go into the goal. The game became increas­ing­ly rough: when CSKA final­ly scored in the 89th minute, it got out of con­trol.

After the missed goal, the Argen­tinean Bas­tia began to open­ly hit the legs of the CSKA play­ers. He jumped into Sergei Semak (cur­rent Zen­it coach) with both feet, after which a mas­sive brawl began.

After the fight, the judge showed four red cards, and CSKA took sec­ond place at the end of the cham­pi­onship, los­ing the title to Loko­mo­tiv.

Crazy defender from Real Madrid

Pepe is a for­mer defen­sive leader of Real Madrid and the Por­tuguese nation­al team. It was in his games for Madrid that Pepe earned the rep­u­ta­tion of a psy­chopath: the defend­er hit his oppo­nents in the legs and start­ed fights.

The most egre­gious case hap­pened in 2009 — against Getafe. At the end, with the score 2:2, strik­er Javier Cas­quero burst into the Real penal­ty area and fell after a push from Pepe. This infu­ri­at­ed the defend­er, and he kicked his prone oppo­nent.

“I’m crushed. I lost con­trol of myself. I don’t rec­og­nize myself in these rep­e­ti­tions, I can’t express how I feel. This is the worst pun­ish­ment I could receive,” Pepe lament­ed after the game.

Despite his remorse, the defend­er received a 10-match sus­pen­sion and missed four months — a record pun­ish­ment for the Span­ish cham­pi­onship. By the way, a penal­ty was award­ed for Pepe’s foul, but the Getafe play­er did not take it.

An indecent gesture by Roman Shirokov (and, of course, Effenberg!)

The match between Zen­it and Vol­ga took place on May 19, 2013 in St. Peters­burg and end­ed in a 3:1 vic­to­ry for the hosts. Shi­rokov appeared on the field in the 59th minute: some of the fans booed him and sub­se­quent­ly insult­ed him — the play­er had a scan­dalous rep­u­ta­tion.

In the 91st minute, Shi­rokov scored a goal, after which he made inde­cent ges­tures to the fans sev­er­al times. The Russ­ian nation­al team play­er received a red card and a two-match dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion.

David Beckham’s controversial red card

At the 1998 World Cup, the teams of Eng­land and Argenti­na met in the 1/8 finals. Young David Beck­ham shone in the Eng­lish line­up, and the brute Diego Sime­one played in the Argen­tine sup­port zone. He spent the whole match try­ing to pro­voke the Eng­lish play­ers, includ­ing David.

In the 47th minute, Sime­one rough­ly pushed Beck­ham: falling onto the lawn, he waved his foot, and the Argen­tine feigned incred­i­ble suf­fer­ing. Beck­ham received a red card, and the Eng­lish lost in the post-match penal­ties.

Thierry Henry’s handball that buried Ireland

On Novem­ber 18, 2009, the French nation­al team host­ed the Irish nation­al team at home in the return play-off match for the right to play at the 2010 World Cup. The first match in Ire­land was won by the French 1:0. In the return match, Roy Keane lev­eled the score of the two-legged con­fronta­tion.

A scan­dal broke out — FIFA had to pay the Irish a com­pen­sa­tion of 5 mil­lion euros. Hen­ry was called an unscrupu­lous play­er who did not admit that he had bro­ken the rules — although such noble deeds did hap­pen in foot­ball.