BBM has seen some legendary players in action during our time on the terraces: Gennaro Gattuso, Ronaldinho, Eric Cantona, Carlton Palmer. All the greats. And if one of those players ever gave us their shirt after a game, only for another star-struck fan to try and snatch it off us, we’d probably put up a bit of a scrap. That’s exactly what happened during Barca’s 3-1 champions League first leg win over Bayer Leverkusen last month, when two fans went at each other for the glorious prize of Lionel Messi’s shirt. The only problem was they were both Bayer Leverkusen players.
Levekusen defender Michal Kadlec was keen to get his hands on the three-time Ballon d’Or winner’s shirt at half-time, but a row broke out as teammate Manuel Friedrich claimed it for himself.
Kadlec, who scored the Germans’ only goal, eventually got the souvenir at full time, but Leverkusen sporting director Rudi Voller felt that the players’ eagerness to get a Messi memento did not exactly portray the right image to fans who had just seen the team get walloped in their own stadium. “I can guarantee that Kadlec and Friedrich will auction off their Messi shirts for a good cause. What the pair did was a bit over the top,” the poodle-permed former Germany forward said.
Kadlec insisted that his desire to get Messi’s shirt did not distract him from his duties on the field, telling Sky: “When you play against such a player, then you always want his shirt. I would have swapped it immediately for a better result, but it is a shame that we did not do enough.”
So essentially, it’s the millionaire version of collecting a Panini football sticker album.
