'STEVEN GERRARD FIGHT AT LIVERPOOL LEFT ME TRAUMATISED - THEY HATED EACH OTHER SO MUCH'

Steven Gerrard wasn't afraid of setting the record straight at Liverpool - which one of his former team-mates learnt in a "traumatising" experience.

As captain of the Reds for 12 years, Gerrard had to maintain a level of respect and set an example on the pitch. Being given the armband aged just 23 in 2003 by Gerard Houllier, he largely had to learn on the job.

And while he was the model pro, one of his first lessons was laying down the law in the dressing room. Like every football team, Houllier's side had some larger-than-life characters to contain - none more so than the enigmatic El Hadji Diouf.

To say he and Gerrard didn't see eye-to-eye is an understatement. Summing up the tension between them, it reached boiling point in a pre-season friendly of all games, as revealed by Florent Sinama Pongolle.

The Frenchman was a youngster on the fringes of the Liverpool first team at the time, with the experience having a lasting impact on him. Recalling the incident, Pongolle told journalist Walid Acherchour: "Half-time of a pre-season game. Fight between Diouf and Gerrard. I was traumatised.

"Can you imagine the young ones seeing this and thinking that's what professionals are like at that level? At half-time, in the dressing room. Stevie G is all like, 'You have to pass, you have to pass' and [Diouf] just loses it.

"He didn't speak English. His English was rubbish. You know what he did? They hated each other so much. Steven Gerrard arrives, he insults Diouf. 'Hey, you f******'.

"And [Diouf] couldn't answer, so he grabs Gerard Houllier and says, 'Tell him, I'll f*** his mum'. He came in and said, 'I'm not his mate, I'll do him in straight away.'"

Unsurprisingly, Diouf spent just two seasons playing alongside Gerrard, scoring six goals and assisting 13 in 80 appearances for the club. They later clashed again, this time on the pitch, when playing against one another.

Diouf was a Blackburn Rovers player when they came face-to-face and had to be separated by team-mates during a Premier League encounter in February 2010. He's since called Gerrard a "brown-noser" who was "afraid of looking into my eyes".

The former England midfielder, meanwhile, said Diouf "did not care about football and about Liverpool" in his autobiography. As for Pongolle, he went on to have a successful journeyman career after leaving Anfield in 2006, most notably in Spain including a two-year stint at Atletico Madrid.

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2024-07-18T09:10:04Z dg43tfdfdgfd