Jamie Carragher has recounted one moment during his Liverpool career for which he was forced to apologise to his teammates.
The former Reds stalwart infamously had a brief scrap with defensive colleague Alvaro Arbeloa during a 2-0 win over West Brom in 2009, and he harked back to that fracas during new Sky Sports show Stick to Football.
The 45-year-old recalled being ordered to apologise by then-manager Rafael Benitez, saying: “There was a couple of times when I had to apologise in front of the dressing room.
“I nearly came to a fight on the pitch with my own teammate, so I had to go in and apologise. Arbeloa, the Spanish right-back, he was going forward too much. I needed protection!
“We nearly came to blows on the pitch, then after the game you think ‘Oh it was a bit much, that’. I tried to apologise after the game and he threw his hand, so you lose your head again a little bit, but the next day the manager was like, ‘No, you’ve got to apologise in front of all the team’.
“Sometimes you’ve just got to say ‘sorry’, and you just move on and forget it.”
Thankfully Carragher and Arbeloa were able to quickly put their disagreement to bed, which isn’t always the case in such scenarios, as we’re currently seeing with the ongoing feud at Manchester United between Erik ten Hag and Jadon Sancho.
Teammates will routinely argue during matches in the heat of the moment, but once such flashpoints are put to rest afterwards rather than being allowed to fester and grow, players can swiftly get on with working together for the betterment of the group.
You can view Carragher’s comments below (from 12:27), via The Overlap on YouTube: