One of the greatest rivalries in English football, a match between Liverpool and Manchester United will be played today and everybody is expecting a thrilling and exciting match between the two teams. But 17 years ago, it wasn’t like that. This game was still branded ’a derby’ but the Reds were out of the equation for the Premier League title. In those days, it was just United and Arsenal. The number of consecutive titles between those two teams? Nine! So, on this day, one of those fierce matches was played between the two biggest competitors for the title, but what followed after the match has become known in the football world as ’Battle of the buffet’. Nani: ‘Sir Alex Ferguson allowed players to arrive at training drunk’It was to be the 50th Arsenal match without a defeat, as the Gunners just finished the previous season as Premier League champions without being defeated all season. That trend continued into the next season, and they came to the figure of 49 matches without defeat. But United were not going to allow Arsenal to reach the number 50, at least not on Old Trafford. “All week Arsenal had been banging on about how great it would be to make it to 50 games unbeaten at Old Trafford. Big mistake. They fired us up. Fifty games unbeaten? No way. Not at our place“ remembers Wayne Rooney. Jaap Stam: ‘Ferguson sold me to Lazio at the petrol station’In the end, United did spoil the party by winning 2-0, but the match was overshadowed by controversies from the referee Mike Riley, who failed to give a red card to Ruud Van Nistelrooy and Rio Ferdinand, and then awarded a dodgy penalty for United. Needless to say that Arsene Wenger was fuming after the match. „Riley decided the game like we know he can do at Old Trafford. We were robbed. There was no contact at all for the penalty, even Rooney said so. We can only master our own performance and not the referee’s performance. We all know Van Nistelrooy, he can only cheat people who don’t know him“ said Wenger after the game. Robert Pires: “I decided to leave Arsenal after Champions League final”After the game ended in such a fashion, and with big characters in both teams, something was bound to happen afterward. And it did. A clash between Van Nistelrooy and Wenger was at the heart of it. Ferguson and the Gunners boss also exchanged angry words in the tunnel before the players began getting into a ‘handbags’-style fight. And one sportsmanship gesture from United was turned into a ’Pizzagate’. As is tradition, United had laid on food for the Arsenal team, which had been put into their dressing room. But, after such a scuffle in the tunnel, on the way to the dressing room, someone first got the idea of using food as a weapon, and quickly it turned out to be ’Battle of the buffet’, which ended in complete silence when sir Alex Ferguson was slapped with a sliece of pizza. „This slice of pizza came flying over my head and hit Fergie straight in the mouth. The slap echoed down the tunnel and everything stopped – the fighting, the yelling, everything. All eyes turned and all mouths gawped to see this pizza slip off that famous puce face and roll down his nice black suit. I thought Ferguson was going to explode. But then he stormed off into the dressing room cursing and grunting, brushing the crumbs and stains off his collar. We all went back into the dressing room and fell about laughing” remembers Ashley Cole. Talents that Wenger had on his radar: How Arsenal dropped Ronaldo, Mbappe, Pique and Messi12 years later, it was revealed who was the player who stroke Ferguson with pizza. In Sky TV show A League of Their Own, Cesc Fabregas, former Arsenal and Chelsea, and current Monaco player revealed his side of the story. „Because I didn’t play I was one of the first players to go into the tunnel and I just saw a pizza because I was hungry. I started hearing shouts and I went out and saw Rio Ferdinand all the big boys Thierry, and Sol Campbell going together, getting into a fight. When you are young and I was a little like this, I just didn’t know what to do as I was so small and skinny and to be honest I didn’t aim at anyone. But Man United were on one side so I just did it because there was nothing I could do because the tunnel was full of big guys having an argument. I found out later it touched Mr Ferguson and I apologized already publicly and I’ll do it again. It wasn’t intentional it was a moment that just happens“ he told BeIN Sport in 2019. Alex Song talks on Arsenal, Barcelona struggles and why he joined Djibouti sideThe Aftermath? Van Nistelrooy was handed a three-match ban for his challenge on Cole, with Arsenal boss Wenger slapped with a £15,000 fine for his allegations of cheating. The FA also stepped in to mediate between the two clubs, in an effort to “avoid any repeat of the adverse publicity that surrounded the game”.
