ALL YOU NEED IS HATE
Basketball great Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen won six NBA rings together with the Chicago Bulls but they couldn’t stand each other. Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Mido didn’t play for long together at Ajax Amsterdam, which is just as well, because Ibra was moved to hurl a pair of scissors at the Egyptian.
That’s almost as bad as former figure skater Tonya Harding, who conspired to break the kneecap of her Team USA colleague Nancy Kerrigan. In the end, the hired attacker bruised Kerrigan’s thigh, but it’s the thought that counts.
Legendary Brazil strikers Romario and Bebeto, now both politicians, were as compatible on the pitch as they were incompatible off it.
“Bebeto off the field is more the type that stays at home; I’m a street cat,” said Romario, playboy son of a Rio favela. He also called the wholesome Bebeto a “chorao ”, or crybaby, because of the way he complained to match officials. At one point it got so bad they refused to sit next to each other on a flight.
But the best description of anticamaraderie came from footballer Andy Cole, who was spectacularly honest about his Manchester United striking partner, Teddy Sheringham. “I would rather sit down and have a cuppa with Neil Ruddock, who broke my leg in two places in 1996, than with Teddy Sheringham, whom I’ve pretty much detested for the past 15 years,” Cole said.
“We played together for years. We scored a lot of goals. I never spoke a single word to him.”
Cole and Sheringham scored 54 goals together at United and won an historic treble. Not bad for guys who didn’t speak to each other.
Like anyone, sportsmen don’t want to hate each other. They dream of friendships that will last forever, that their kids will be friends and their kids’ kids — a fantasy not unlike courtship.
In the end though, not everybody is as lucky as Jayawardene and Sangakkara. And for many sporting comrades, there’s nothing quite like a bit of bad blood to raise your pulse. LS