Former Liverpool star Craig Bellamy has called out John Arne Riise for his “bulls***” claims over the infamous golf club attack that took place ahead of a Champions League game against Barcelona in 2007.
Bellamy spent two seasons at Anfield in two separate spells, with the attacker during a team break in Portugal coming in his first campaign with the Reds.
Heading into their trip to the Nou Camp, Liverpool had been struggling for form, drawing against Everton and throwing away the lead to fall to a defeat at Newcastle United.
An early exit from the FA Cup gave manager Rafa Benitez the chance to recharge his troops, so he took them on a five-day training camp to Portugal, but the trip was marred by an unsavoury incident.
After clashing throughout the day, Bellamy went to Riise’s room and proceeded to hit him with a golf club, an incident the former Welsh international has now detailed in depth.
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“He [Riise] pushed me a couple of times and I thought ‘where do I go with this?’. We played golf in the morning with each other and he was cheating,” Bellamy told The Central Club.
“Robbie Fowler was playing with us and I said to Robbie ‘he’s cheating you know’. Because I’d seen the ball go in the lake, he’s picked one up and gone ‘oh I’ve found it’.
“We had a Christmas do and he didn’t go, he said he had to go to Norway, but we found out he didn’t got to Norway, he just didn’t want to go on a Christmas do so he had to pay a fine.
“He had to sing a song as part of his fine. So I was like ‘you’ve got to sing’, but he was refusing so my head was like ‘I’ve had enough of you, no you’re singing’.
“He sort of came back at me like ‘no I ain’t signing, now f****** mind your own business’. I let it go, I was with Sami Hyypia because we have the same agent and he was like ‘just leave it’.”
Bellamy though, could not leave it for long and after getting drunk, went to have it out with Riise in his hotel room.
“You know when it’s just chewing away at you and with drink as well. So he went, I remember staying behind and me and Steve Finnan were going back to our room,” Bellamy added.
“And I was like ‘I’m not having this, I’m not accepting what he done there’. So I got my club, went to his room, knocked the door.
“Daniel Agger’s sharing with him. He [Riise] put it on the latch because he thinks it’s Daniel Agger.
“So I open the door, roll in, he’s in bed, I smacked him across the legs and said ‘you ever speak to me like that in front of anyone, I will put this round your head’.
“That was it. I went, it was a little bit more talking c***.”
In the first game after the incident, Bellamy scored and celebrated by swinging an imaginary golf club, despite having approached Riise to apologise.
But in his autobiography, Riise claimed that Bellamy had attempted to seriously injure him by swinging full force.
“Bellamy raised the club over his head and swung as hard as he could. He tried to hit my shins, which would have ended my career, but I managed to pull my leg away in time,” he wrote.
“He raised the club and swung again. This time he connected. Full force on my hip. I was so pumped with adrenaline that I didn’t feel the pain, but he hit me hard. It was an iron.
“The next blow smashed into my thigh. I tried to hold up the sheet, but he continued to strike. He could seriously injure me.”
But Bellamy has now blasted Riise’s claims as being “bulls***” and also insisted that he does not regret celebrating his goal against Barcelona by making light of the incident.
“It was all b******* honest to God. I can understand him being half asleep and then the shock, I can understand that,” he told The Central Club.
“And listen, this is not a proud moment, I’d love to take that back, it was stupid, beyond stupid.
“The best thing about it, the media were like I told people I was going to do if I scored, people put a bet on it.
“But one, I didn’t know I was playing until an hour before kick-off because you never did with Rafa and two, do you honestly think I’m that naïve to think I’m going to score at the Nou Camp?
“It was nuts how the game worked out, I scored and he scored the winner.”
