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Physical fights between teammates are nothing new in football. Newcastle’s Lee Bowyer and Kieron Dyer were famously sent off for trading blows on the pitch in 2005, before issuing grovelling apologies after the game. John Hartson kicked his West Ham teammate Eyal Berkovic in the face during a training-ground bust-up in 1998, with the midfielder claiming: “If my head had been a ball, it would have been in the top corner of the net.” Robinho once took a pop at Thomas Gravesen during a Real Madrid training session in 2006. The Dane responded, and was sold that summer to Celtic.
But few altercations can match the ferocity of the fight between Adrien Rabiot and the England Under-21 winger Jonathan Rowe in the Marseille dressing room last month, after a 1-0 defeat by a 10-man Rennes side. The brawl was so “incredibly violent” that a junior member of the Marseille squad, Darryl Bakola, fainted as he watched.
Roberto De Zerbi, the Marseille manager, said: “I’ve never seen a fight like that before. We have two employees fighting like in an English pub, with a teammate on the ground because he had lost consciousness. What should the employer do in France? There are two solutions, either suspension or dismissal.” Marseille chose the latter, with Rabiot and Rowe both sold at the end of the transfer window, to Milan and Bologna respectively.
A month later, Rabiot and Rowe are poised for an early reunion, as their new teams meet in Serie A. The fight adds fuel to the fire for Sunday’s match at San Siro. There is little love lost between Milan and Bologna following May’s Coppa Italia final, in which Dan Ndoye’s winner earned the latter their first major domestic trophy in more than 50 years and qualification to the Europa League.
Missing out on Europe was another failure for Milan, who slumped to eighth in Serie A last season, and played a part in the club chosing to replace Sérgio Conceição as manager with Massimiliano Allegri and overhaul their squad – a total of 29 first-team players were sold, loaned or released, or retired, during the summer. Tijjani Reijnders was the most high-profile of these departures – sold to Manchester City for £46.6m – and Milan’s new look midfield now includes Rabiot, the 40-year-old Luka Modric, Ardon Jashari (who is now out for months after a leg fracture in training), and the promising but unproven Samuele Ricci.
Despite costing just €10m, Rabiot – who reportedly took a pay cut to seal the move – is the one tipped to have the most immediate impact. He is childhood friends with the goalkeeper Mike Maignan and was a key player for Allegri at Juventus before moving to Marseille. “We’ve shared a lot,” Rabiot said of his manager. “He lives for football, just like me. We have a great connection; even after he left Juventus, we kept talking, and we even met up. He’s a great person, besides being a coach. I spoke with Allegri when he arrived at Milan, but I still had a contract with Marseille. Then, the coach called me again after what happened in Marseille. He explained the project to me, and in the end, everything went quickly. We managed to close the deal.”
Rabiot and Rowe reportedly refused to apologise for their roles in the fight at Marseille but, perhaps buoyed by his return to Italy, tensions have since cooled from Rabiot’s side at least. The Frenchman’s mother and agent, Veronique Rabiot, attempted to play down the brawl, pointing out that “nobody went to hospital”, while Rabiot spoke at his Milan unveiling about the prospect of seeing Rowe again on their respective debuts.
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“There’s nothing special about him. We texted each other after he went to Bologna and I came to Milan,” said Rabiot. “We’ll see each other on Sunday at San Siro. It’ll be nice to see him. He’s a good guy. What happened in Marseille is something that could happen anywhere, but it didn’t change our relationship. I’ll be happy to see him, and I’m sure he’ll feel the same. We’ve moved past that episode. We’ve talked about other things, too. I have no regrets; these things can happen. Life can change quickly, and I think I left good memories in Marseille.”
Rowe has yet to publicly comment but it will be fascinating to see if the pair really have buried the hatchet come Sunday.
