"Bar brawl," says Olympique boss about Rabiot and Rowe bust-up | OneFootball

“It was a bar fight,” explained Olympique de Marseille coach, Italian Roberto De Zerbi, about the argument in the team's locker room between midfielder Adrien Rabiot and striker Jonathan Rowe, which led the management to put the two players on the club's transfer list.

“I ask you: what would happen if, in your workplace, two people, two employees, two workers, two lawyers, fought? It was a bar fight, in front of the sports director, in front of the coach, with a teammate on the ground (17-year-old young striker Darryl Vakola had fainted),” De Zerbi said in a press conference on Friday (22), on the eve of the game against Paris FC, for the 2nd round of the French Championship.

“It's true that no one broke their teeth, but it was a fight that I had never seen in all my years in football. For the first time in my career, I didn't know what to do or what to say,” added the coach.

“I come from the streets, I'm used to fights, but I had never seen anything like that. The club's security guards tried to separate them. Normally they are there to protect us from others, not from ourselves,” the Italian continued.

Last week, after Olympique's 1-0 defeat to Rennes, Rabiot and Rowe had a heated argument until they came to blows in the locker room.

After this “episode of extreme violence,” as defined by club president Pablo Longoria, the players were included on the transfer list and must look for a new team.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.