Idrissa Gueye vs Michael Keane, Lee Bowyer vs Kieron Dyer & the most infamous football team-mate fights

At the peak of their Barclays era under Tony Pulis, Stoke City's XI was full of hard-man players that you simply would not want to mess with, but in December 2008 two of them turned on each other in an ugly incident that was very similar to Gueye's clash with Keane at Old Trafford.

Stoke had been leading West Ham at Upton Park, but a poor clearance from captain Griffin inside his own box allowed Carlton Cole to equalise with a fine finish on the turn. That error led to the defender being berated by his own team-mate, striker Fuller, as the two exchanged words before the game had resumed. The flashpoint ended with Fuller planting a slap on his skipper and having a red card flashed in his direction after being restrained by his team-mates. Ugly stuff.

Two former Arsenal players who were no strangers to controversy, Bendtner has admitted in an interview with The Athletic that he "didn't get on at all" with fellow striker Adebayor at the best of times during their period as team-mates at the Emirates Stadium - but training ground tensions boiled over onto the pitch in January 2008.

With Arsene Wenger's side 4-1 down to arch-rivals Tottenham in the dying embers of their League Cup semi-final second leg at White Hart Lane - on their way to a crushing 5-1 defeat - there was a flare-up between the two frustrated centre-forwards. The pair started pushing and shoving each other off the ball, and the Dane was even left bloodied after Adebayor's head made contact with his nose.

To make matters even worse, Arsenal's fierce north London foes would go on to lift the trophy at Wembley the following month.

Tottenham legends Lloris and Son are still team-mates to this day, after the attacker followed the goalkeeper to LAFC in MLS, so presumably they put this incident behind them - but that didn't make in any less bizarre. Amid the Premier League's 'Project Restart' in July 2020 against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, the pair became embroiled in a furious half-time bust-up during a home clash with Everton.

Lloris took issue with Son's failure to track back, charging up to the South Korean on the half-time whistle and repeatedly shoving him and yelling at him. Amazon Prime's All or Nothing documentary, which followed Spurs at the time, showed that the dispute continued into the dressing room as the stopper screamed: "Make the run! One minute to go, we nearly concede a goal! Make the run for the team". Defender Serge Aurier and then-manager Jose Mourinho were then forced to keep the pair apart before tempers eventually simmered down.

Tottenham would ultimately hold on to their 1-0 lead to win, and Son and Lloris embraced after the game.

The iconic 'Robbery' partnership between revered wingers Robben and Ribery was notorious for terrorising defences across the Bundesliga and Europe, but on one high-stakes Champions League night the revered duo turned on each other in the Bayern Munich dressing room in an incident that the Dutchman later described as an 'explosion'.

Bayern trailed Real Madrid 2-1 at the break at the Santiago Bernabeu in the second leg of their semi-final in April 2012 after a brace from Cristiano Ronaldo and a Robben spot-kick, with the scores locked at 3-3 on aggregate. The legendary wide men had argued over who should take a free-kick on the stroke of half-time, and Ribery reportedly punched his team-mate as the spat erupted behind closed doors in the belly of the stadium.

"We've always got on really well and it exploded between us once," Robben said in an interview with Sky Deutschland five years later. "But the incident only made us stronger." Ribery added: "Sometimes these things happen in football."

Le Saux punched Blackburn and England team-mate Batty so hard in this ugly on-pitch scrap that he actually broke his hand. The flashpoint came in freezing conditions in Moscow during Rovers' ill-fated Champions League campaign in 1995-96, after they had claimed an unlikely league title the previous season.

Less than four minutes into the clash with Spartak, Le Saux and Batty quite literally came to blows after farcically colliding when going for the same ball to send it bobbling out for a throw-in. The pair had obviously exchanged words while out of shot, and when the camera picked them back up the left-back was swinging his fists at the midfielder before captain Tim Sherwood stepped in. In truly 90s style, the referee let the fracas go completely unpunished once they had been separated, with the incident culminating in Le Saux famously yelling "f*ck off" at his team-mate.

The former defender later revealed in his book that tensions between him and Batty had been rising off the pitch for some time. "Every time there’s a bust-up between team-mates, David Batty and I always end up in a list of top 10 punch-ups between footballers," Le Saux said in an interview with The Athletic in 2019. Sorry, Graeme.

There are few who would be brave enough to take on the brutish Ibrahimovic, on or off the pitch, but former USMNT star Onyewu held his own during their time together at AC Milan in November 2011, in what the Swede described as a "crazy and furious" fight that "was like life and death".

The scrap unfolded on the training ground at Milanello after the 6ft4 American defender crunched into a tackle on the iconic attacker and unintentionally caught him on the ankle. Inevitably, Ibrahimovic didn't respond too well, retaliating with an ugly challenge of his own before attempting to get to grips with his team-mate, who swiftly knocked him back down to the ground according to their former team-mate Alexandre Pato. The Brazilian revealed: "Oguchi gripped him and knocked him over in a second. Ibra is gigantic, but Onyewu knocked him to the ground with incredible ease. He [Onyewu] jumped on him and he was about to punch him. Everyone started yelling: 'Stop, stop: you're going to kill him!'"

In his own version of events, Zlatan wrote in his autobiography: "I headbutted him, and we flew at each other. We wanted to tear each other limb from limb. It was brutal. We were rolling around, punching and kneeing each other. We were crazy and furious - it was like life and death."

A recent entry on this unusual list from the summer of 2025, this was a bust-up so savage that Marseille head coach Roberto De Zerbi - himself no stranger to fiery confrontations - described it as an 'English pub fight', with the altercation remarkably resulting in the players involved swiftly being transfer listed and subsequently sold.

Frenchman Rabiot and England Under-21 international Rowe took their frustrations out on each other in a furious dressing room punch-up after OM slipped to a stoppage-time opening-day 1-0 defeat at Rennes in August, despite the hosts being reduced to 10 men after just half an hour. The former is reported to have questioned the latter's commitment, leading to insults being hurled and the players coming to blows in front of their team-mates, coaching staff and even members of the club hierarchy in what president Pablo Longoria described as "extremely violent" scenes.

"It was a bar fight, in front of the sporting director, in front of the coach, with a team-mate on the ground (Darryl Bakola, who was suffering a medical emergency)," De Zerbi said in the aftermath. "It's true that no teeth were broken during the fight, but it was a fight like I've never seen in all my years in football. I didn't know what to say or what to do. I've never seen anything like it. I come from the streets, I'm used to fights, but I've never seen anything like this. The club's bodyguards were trying to separate them. Normally they're supposed to protect us from others, not from ourselves."

Probably the most infamous incident of football infighting of the lot, with this full-on scrap between Newcastle team-mates Bowyer and Dyer unfolding in front of 52,000 people on the St James' Park pitch in April 2005. The Magpies were trailing 3-0 to Aston Villa at the time in a sorry display and already found themselves down to 10 after centre-back Steven Taylor was famously sent off for 'saving' a goal-bound shot, despite his best attempts to convince the referee he'd been hit in the back as he writhed around like he'd been picked off by a sniper in row Z.

With 10 minutes left on the clock, Bowyer was seen seemingly urging his fellow midfielder to get up the pitch as an aerial ball was floated above them. They then exchanged words, with Bowyer approaching Dyer before they got to grips with each others' shirts. Dyer grabbed his colleague's throat and Bowyer then landed two hefty blows on the latter's head. Dyer attempted to swing back, but Villa captain Gareth Barry stepped in just in time to haul them apart and lead Bowyer away with his shirt nearly ripped in two.

Inevitably, both players were given their marching orders, with Bowyer later handed a seven-game ban while Dyer was suspended for three. The duo would later be forced to apologise and pose shaking hands in a cringeworthy photo shoot to prove that the incident had been put behind them, as then-manager Graeme Souness addressed the media.