By GRANT JAMES
“Fracasados.” That’s what the media in Argentina refer the current national football team as. It means “failures,” but with a much nastier, harsher edge to it… as you can imagine. To the neutral, it could seem rather unfair to label a country who have reached 3 major finals in 2 years’ failures, but with the quality of players the country has at its disposal, and arguably the best player ever to play the game in his prime, the frustration is somewhat understandable. Think of it this way, if they’re failures, what are England?!
The confrontation between the media and the players began following accusations that Ezequial Lavezzi had been smoking cannabis whilst on national team duty. Argentina’s entire 23-man squad, led by captain Lionel Messi, turned up for the press conference after the 3-0 win over Columbia to demand respect, and revealed no players would be answering questions, insisting a line had been crossed. In this article, we will be looking back at 5 of the most heated press conferences in football history.
5)
Nigel Pearson produced one of the greatest and most bizarre rants of all time after this feisty confrontation with journalist Ian Baker. Following a gutsy 3-1 loss to Chelsea, Pearson was fed up with the amount of ‘criticism and negativity’ his players had to endure over the course of the season, and when asked to specify the criticism, he lost it, famously referring to Baker as ‘an ostrich.’
4)
In 2010, then Blackpool manager Ian Holloway fumed at the footballing authorities for ‘allowing Wayne Rooney to manufacture his exit from Manchester United.’ With Rooney reaching the age of 25 and the 1995 Bosman rule allowing players who are over the age of 24 to leave their current club at the end of their contract for free, Holloway believed it punished clubs unfairly.
3)
Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez famously produced a piece of paper with incidents involving Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson during this tense press conference in 2009. Liverpool were top of the league at the time, but Benitez criticized Ferguson about a
number of things, insisting United were nervous about the title race and that Ferguson was the only manager who could ‘talk about referees, and nothing happens.’
2)
Furious Italian Alberto Malesani was managing Panathinaikos when he unleashed an outburst of anger towards the clubs’ fans and journalists. He pleaded with the fans for time and to trust the young squad he had assembled, but I’m not sure he went about it the right way. Malesani was unsurprisingly sacked at the end of the season.
1)
At number 1 is former Bayern Munich and Republic of Ireland manager Giovanni Trappatoni, who lost his temper at a press conference after 3 consecutive defeats and having all but conceded the Bundesliga title to Kaiserslautern. Trappatoni emphasised his fury at some players who had publicly criticised him, notoriously referring to them as ‘weak like an empty bottle.’
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