Charlie Adam’s 2011 tackle on Gareth Bale
The background
Pre-season friendlies are usually fairly slow-paced affairs where coaches try out different formations and players work their way back to full fitness after a few weeks unwinding on the beach. Given nothing really rides on the result of pre-season friendlies, heavy tackles are very much frowned upon by players and fans alike. In fact, there’s an unspoken understanding that no-one goes in too hard during pre-season.
Try telling that to Liverpool’s Charlie Adam. During Liverpool’s so-called friendly with Premiership rivals Tottenham on the weekend, Adam tackled Spurs’ Gareth Bale pretty viciously from behind. The tackle injured Bale – he left the stadium in Baltimore in a protective boot and is set for scan – and enraged the Welshman. Bale reportedly said: “He’s a bit of a coward. What he did was over the top. Some people are like that and it’s just wrong. It’s flattering when players try to take you out in a game but, when it threatens your career, it becomes more serious than that.”
“The player (Bale) is gone and he comes in from behind on Gareth’s ankle,” fumed Chelsea manager Andre Villas-Boas, quoted in The Daily Mail. ‘It is a very nasty challenge.”
Bale’s fury
Bale has reason to be pretty furious with Adam given it’s not the first time the latter has injured the former. In May 2011, Adam, then playing for Blackpool, injured Bale in a tackle, causing ankle ligament damage which meant he was out for three months. “There are pictures on the internet of what he did before when he snapped all my ankle ligaments. I was out for three months that time. He’s come for me twice now – and he’s got me twice,” said Bale. “When someone makes a very bad tackle on you, you expect an apology. I’ve had no apology. And I’m not going to accept his apology.”
A history of violence
Sadly, Adam’s supposedly pre-meditated hit on Bale is not the first time a player has been taken out in an apparently pre-meditated and calculated on field attack. Here’s The Periscope Post’s round-up of other horror tackles. Some are of the premeditated variety while others are just hopelessly mis-timed and dangerous. None are pretty.
Please note: In the interests of good taste, certain horrendous tackles such as Ryan Shawcross’ leg-breaker on Eduardo have been omitted.
Red devil Keano sees red
Manchester United midfield enforcer and hard man Roy Keane reckless high tackle on Alfe Inge-Haaland’s in the April 2011 Manchester derby is perhaps the best-known horror tackle of all-time. In September 1997, when Manchester Unitedwere losing 1-0 to Haaland’s Leeds, Keane injured his anterior cruciate ligament in a fairly innocuous clash with Haaland. As Keane lay prone on the ground, Haaland criticised Keane for an attempted foul and suggested that he was feigning injury to avoid punishment. Keane was out of action for nearly a year afterwards, missing the remainder of the 1997-98 season. Three and a half years later, Keane got his revenge, for which he was fined £5,000 and received a three-match ban. In his biography, Keane admitted that he wanted to “hurt” Haaland as revenge.
Joey Barton: Captain reckless
No round-up of horror tackles would be complete without a Joey Barton moment. Or two. Here’s QPR’s ex-captain getting thoroughly stuck in on Dickson Etuhu and Xabi Alonso. Both are more wild and reckless than cold and calculating. Not that makes either of them alright.
Schumacher’s cynical slam
West German goalkeeper Harald ‘Toni’ Schumacher’s chilling bodycheck on French player Patrick Battison at the 1982 World Cup semi-final goes down as perhaps the most cynical act perpetrated on a football pitch. Battison lost two teeth and was knocked out by Schumacher but, incredibly, the referee did not even give a foul let alone a red card to Schumacher. West Germany went on to win the match on penalties. French football fans are still furious.
BoJo’s rugger tackle
London mayor Boris Johnson is not known for his footballing prowess. And never will he be. Check out this so-called ‘tackle’ he performed on on a German player in a celebrity legends game.
Manchester City defender Ben Thatcher’s sickening elbow on Portsmouth playmaker Pedro Mendes is one you’ll probably not want to see again. For the record, Thatcher did apologize for his foul thuggery:
More on football
- Joey Barton: Beyond redemption?
- Balotelli: The ultimate maverick
- Gary Speed’s death an accident?
