5 Most Brutal Acts Of Revenge In Football History

Football is game littered with so many bad guys. Y'know, those pantomime villains or outright sh*thouses who you can't help but look at and salivate at the prospect of them finally getting their comeuppance.

More often than not, of course, very few of these people every really have any sort of revenge or payback inflicted upon them - particularly with the direction that the beautiful game has been going in over the past few years.

Still, that's not to say that there aren't some fantastic examples of utterly brutal acts of revenge being inflicted on a player at certain points. And it's with that trail of thought that we're going to stick with here.

Ahead, we've picked out five brilliant examples of karma coming back to firmly bite someone on the backside - be it in sheer physical brutality, more of a mental attack, or even just a case of a player being able to stick the proverbial middle finger up at someone.

What that in mind, then, here are five such times where brutal acts of revenge and payback was served up in the beautiful game.

During a 1997 match against Leeds, Roy Keane’s season was left in tatters after he suffered a cruciate ligament injury.

Frustrated as Manchester United stumbled to a 1-0 defeat at Leeds' Elland Road, Keane vented this frustration by kicking out at Alfe-Inge Haaland during the game's closing moments.

Said kicking out would backfire, with Keane injuring himself. What really irked the former Nottingham Forest midfielder, though, was that Haaland and David Wetherall stood over the prone Keane and mocked him for faking injury.

And like an elephant, Roy Keane never forgets.

Keane famously got revenge on Haaland by essentially ending the Norwegian’s career.

When April 2001 rolled around and Manchester City – who Haaland was now playing for – came to Old Trafford, United’s captain saw this as the prime time to finally exact some revenge as he purposely went high on Haaland with the intent to hurt him bad.

For anybody debating whether Keane really meant to take out his rival, the player made his intentions were clear during a 2002 interview with The Observer in which Keane explained: “Even in the dressing room afterwards, I had no remorse. My attitude was, f*ck him. What goes around comes around. He got his just rewards. He f*cked me over and my attitude is an eye for an eye.”

After that revenge attack, Haaland only played six more games before officially retiring in 2003 at the age of just 30 due to knee problems.