Broadcasters have lied, there’s no such thing as tunnel beef

Sky has lied to you. They make out as though every Premier League game starts with a fiery exchange of words whilst the teams line up in the tunnel. 

The truth is, the Premier League has had one juicy pre-game tunnel bust-up and one only. 

That one incident has been the subject of documentaries, YouTube compilations and countless pundit discussions… 

Of course, we’re referring to Roy Keane and Patrick Viera’s infamous war of words in 2005. That was 20 years ago. It was good. But it was 20 years ago, and it has left a beefy void ever since.  

The rest of the memorable tunnel moments are not as beefy, they’re mostly awkward:  

• David James sniffed a match ball. Odd, yes. But not that thrilling. 

• Gary Neville ignored people (his brother and Peter Schmeichel).

• Yaya Touré slapped Hazard on the head whilst pleading for him to go easy on City.  

Why this is important 

In truth, fans don’t ask for much. But heated words and cagey glances are both near the top of the wish list.  It adds meaning to matches and lets us know the players care as much as we do. 

In an ideal world, football coverage will start with top-class tactical analysis pre-match, followed by a short WWE-style Royal Rumble in the tunnel before concluding with an excellent game of football. 

We aren’t sure how to inject life into the tunnel but here are some suggestions to get the discussion started:  

• Get rid of the coin toss: the first team with 11  players on the pitch gets to choose which side they attack first and who kicks off. But both teams start in their changing rooms before getting released by the referee’s whistle. Can you imagine the scrap to reach the pitch first… amazing. 

• No more Mr Nice Guy: remove the handshakes from the start of the game. Frankly, I’m bored of watching mates shake hands. You’re about to go to war, act like it or at least pretend like you are.

• Spikey pre-game interviews: pre-match interviews for players should be mandatory. Maybe show them public polls predicting how they’ll deal with their opponent. Just to bait stars into saying something like “Wait and see what I’m gonna do to him when I get the ball”. 

That’s all we got for now, but we are all ears on how to beef up the tunnel walk. The wilder, the better.