According to John Arne Riise, John Carew is a scarier man than Craig Bellamy – but it was the latter who came closest to doing the Liverpool legend lasting damage.
Throughout his Premier League and international career, Riise was in the headlines for more than just his sledgehammer of a left foot and his still-standing record of 110 appearances for the Norwegian national team.
There was the time he sent the same flirty text message to 15 different women just hours after lifting the Champions League trophy, earning him the nickname “SMS King” in the Norwegian press.
'If I didn’t jump out of bed and protect my shins, I would have been done' Riise recalls his violent confrontation with a golf-club wielding Bellamy
And on other occasions, Riise was also embroiled in two high-profile bust-ups with teammates.
One involved Norway’s John Carew, while another notorious incident featured Liverpool’s Craig Bellamy, who attacked his Norwegian team-mate with a golf club after a night of heavy drinking in Portugal.
“We’re laughing, it sounds stupid, and people think I’m kidding when I say it, but he went for my shins,” Riise tells FFT, on behalf of Campobet. “He basically wanted to end my career, and he was drunk and all over the place mentally.”
“It happened to me and I’m laughing about it, so it’s OK, but at the time I was scared that if I didn’t jump out of bed and protect my shins, I would have been done,” he says.
Riise remembers his physical altercation with 6ft 5in John Carew, for which the striker was sent home from the Norway team camp, as a less worrisome affair.
“The thing with Carew only happened very quickly,” Riise recalls. “It shouldn’t have happened obviously, but we talked about it the same day and we’ve been great friends since,” he said.
“But if I met those two one against one, I’d be more scared of Carew than of Bellamy.”
