GENNARO GATTUSO
Credentials The beast to Andrea Pirlo’s beauty for Milan and Italy, Ringhio (‘The Snarl’) was the most terrier-like of midfielders, scurrying about, barking at bigger boys and pissing up their legs (probably). Televisual highlights don’t really do justice to the full narrative arc of his aggro: the deceptively mild early clash, the sinister simmer and the eventual boil-over followed by a ludicrous tackle and glorious multi-player free-for-all. It’s almost operatic.
Angriest moment Explicit challenges aside, Rino’s most mad-eyed moment was the furious, topless headbutt on the fearsome but venerable Tottenham assistant Joe ‘Jaws’ Jordan, another Rossoneri legend. Gattuso blamed that 2011 skirmish (right) for him not getting the Spurs job a decade later, though some inadvisable comments about all sorts of best-avoided issues didn’t help, either.
RAGE RATING
DIEGO COSTA
Credentials Was he constantly on the edge, or did Costa pull one of the great footballing con tricks? So much opposition energy was spent on winding him up, yet he never saw red in the Premier League – until this season, playing for Wolves, butting Brentford’s Ben Mee. Diego’s repertoire of s**thousery also included biting, slapping, poking, stamping, simulating and saucy-gesturing, and he was even labelled a cheat by one of his Chelsea team-mates: the cat-kicking Kurt Zouma.
He did get an early bath in Chelsea’s 2016 FA Cup defeat to Everton (above right), going all misty-eyed, obviously.
