Highlights
- Craig Bellamy attacked John Arne Riise with a golf club over his refusal to sing while on a club trip away.
- Bellamy played down all the incident, although he admitted his actions were ‘beyond stupid’.
- Despite the incident, both scored in a historic 2-1 win against Barcelona just a few days later.
Just days before they were set to do battle in the Champions League against Barcelona, then-manager Rafa Benitez had arranged to take his Liverpool side to the Algarve for a warm-weather training camp, for what was meant to be a relaxing and useful trip for the Reds.
What transpired between two of the squad, as it turned out, would be anything but relaxing, with Craig Bellamy and John Arne Riise getting involved in a heated, drunken altercation that resulted in Bellamy attacking the Norwegian with a golf club in his hotel room.
On the final night of the trip, the pair had argued over Riise’s refusal to sing in the hotel bar on the final night of the trip. Remaining irate and fueled by alcohol, Bellamy went back to Riise’s room, armed with an 8-iron.
What transpired next has been given several sides of the story between both Bellamy and Riise, with Bellamy previously downplaying the accounts of the evening and Riise claiming they were much more violent, across several interviews and his own autobiography.
John Arne Riise’s Side of The Story
The altercation stemmed from Riise’s refusal to sing on a night out
“The whole dinner, he sat there saying: “Riise’s gonna sing!”. I said ‘No, I’m not gonna sing’. But he just kept going. And I didn’t drink, some other people did”, Riise began by saying on the Filthy Fellas Podcast when detailing the events of the evening, which soon made its way to a karaoke bar.
“After dinner, we went to the karaoke place, and Bellamy took the microphone and said again, “Riise’s gonna sing”, and I just lost it. I went up to him and said “Listen, I’m not f****ing singing, so shut the f*** up, or I’m going to smash you.”
Such a threat was not taken on board by the drunken Bellamy, who would soon see Riise again that evening after the Norwegian retired for the night:
“I was rooming with Daniel Agger and I heard some keys in the door. I thought it was Agger coming home, but then the lights came on. You know when you’ve been sleeping and the lights come on? Full on, you can’t see. So I turned over and there’s Bellamy with a golf club in his hands”.
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It was then that the drunken Bellamy would berate the bewildered Riise for his response in the karaoke bar, claiming he did not care what happened to his career should he strike Riise with the club.
“I’m lying there in my bed and Bellamy comes in and starts shouting: ‘I don’t care what happens!’ I could see he was not sober. Then he took a swing at my shins.
“I stood up and took this sheet and I’ve said: ‘Let’s do this the proper way, man-to-man. But no, he stood there and said: ‘I don’t care if I go to jail, my kids have got enough money, I’m gonna f*** you up. Nobody talks to me like this in front of my players! Then he swung and I blocked it with my shin.”
Retaining the element of being the sober one of two, Riise did his best to defuse the situation, and potentially saved his and Bellamy’s Liverpool careers:
“While I was standing there, I’m thinking if I do something, I’ll lose my career at Liverpool. I said to him: ‘Let’s meet tomorrow, 9am. Me and you tomorrow.’ So he agreed to do that. The morning after, I walk to his room, 9 o’clock with Agger, knocked on his door. He wasn’t there. Then he came in five minutes later and didn’t even look at me. Then we had a meeting with Benitez, who said: ‘This case is closed. We’ve got a game in two-three days’.”
The pair managed to settle their differences well enough to put their focus back onto the field, with both men finding the back of the net in a 2-1 win away to Barcelona a few days later.
Craig Bellamy’s Version of Events
Bellamy admiited his actions were ‘beyond stupid’
Whilst Riise has discussed the incident both in interviews and his own autobiography, Running Man, Bellamy has attempted occasionally to downplay the violence depicted in the story, which Riise has disregarded equally on a number of occasions.
Speaking with The Central Club, Bellamy said: “We had a Christmas do, and he didn’t go, he said he had to go to Norway, but we found out he didn’t go to Norway, he just didn’t want to go on a Christmas do so he had to pay a fine.
“He had to sing a song as part of his fine. So I was like ‘you’ve got to sing’, but he was refusing, so my head was like ‘I’ve had enough of you, no, you’re singing’. He sort of came back at me like ‘no I ain’t singing, now f****** mind your own business’. I let it go. I was with Sami Hyypia because we have the same agent, and he was like ‘just leave it’.”
Seemingly unable to leave it for much longer, Bellamy would soon find himself making his way to confront Riise, though accounts differ on what transpired between the two, with the Welshman using some choice words to describe his thoughts on Riise’s account of things.
He added: “It was all b******* honest to God. I can understand him being half asleep and then the shock. I can understand that. I smacked him across the legs and said ‘if you ever speak to me like that in front of anyone, I will put this round your head’. That was it. I went, it was a little bit more talking c***. And listen, this is not a proud moment, I’d love to take that back, it was stupid, beyond stupid.”
Liverpool Beat Barcelona Just a Few Days Later
Bellamy and Riise were both on the scoresheet
Though you may imagine that the explosive incident during that infamous evening may have served as a rather large distraction to Liverpool’s upcoming clash with Barcelona, somehow, it was anything but, with Bellamy and Riise both getting themselves on the scoresheet in a historic win at Camp Nou.
It was Bellamy’s celebration after his equalising header moments before the half-time curtain call at the Camp Nou that was remembered more vividly by many, however, with the Welshman racing away to the corner flag and miming a golf swing.
Bellamy was quick to deflect the issues of the weekend, and the meaning behind the celebration, when speaking post-match with The Liverpool Echo, stating:
“This is how it happens for me. I don’t read what’s in the papers, so it’s not been a problem for me. It’s all out of my control what people write about me. All I could do was work hard and try to get selected to play in a special atmosphere. I didn’t feel I owed a performance, except for the fact it’s my boy’s tenth birthday, so that was for him. If anyone scored, that celebration was part of the deal.”
Riise would complete the job at the Nou Camp, and in a moment that you wouldn’t have expected to follow a hotel room fracas, it was Bellamy who slid a loose ball across the face of goal to find an unmarked Riise, giving Liverpool a 2-1 lead to defend back at Anfield, where they would march on to the Champions League quarter final after winning on away goals.
A lesson for all: when drunk and annoyed at a colleague, leave the 8-irons alone.
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