Bad To The Ball – Football’s 5 Biggest Bad-Boys

From violence to booze, Gazza has been regularly featured in the tabloid newspapers from the 1990s onwards, and he even went bankrupt in 2011. Arguably England’s greatest player of the last 30 years, Gascoigne’s bad boy behaviour also meant that he never made the most of his talent.

4. Joey Barton

At one point the biggest bad boy in English football, Joey Barton has shown other bad boys in the game that it’s possible to change – at least to a degree. Barton now appreciates philosophy and is increasingly respected for his perceptive views. All this is a far cry from Barton’s violent past, which included stubbing out a lighted cigar in a team-mate’s eye.

3. Eric Cantona

French forward Cantona was pivotal to United’s rise back to the top of English football, but he had a dreadful disciplinary record. Earlier in his career, Cantona had thrown the ball at a referee, but that was nothing compared to what happened one night at Selhurst Park in 1995. After being sent off at Crystal Palace, Cantona reacted so wildly to abuse from a Palace fan that he aimed a kung-fu kick at him. Cantona was consequently banned from playing for eight months.

2. Luis Suarez

In 2011, when at Liverpool, Uruguay star Suarez was found guilty of directing racial abuse at Manchester United defender Patrice Evra. Suarez has also been a serial biter in his career, and the forward disgraced himself again when he was at Liverpool – this time when he bit Chelsea defender Branislav Ivanovic in 2013. But, it was at the 2014 World Cup when Suarez probably cemented his position as the biggest bad boy in the modern game, when he bit Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini.

1. Diego Maradona

Whereas one of his rivals for the title of the greatest footballer, Pele, has an almost unblemished reputation, Diego Maradona certainly hasn’t. When things didn’t go his way during matches, Maradona would often ‘lose it’, as was the case in the 1982 World Cup. When playing for Argentina against Brazil, Maradona launched into a tackle on Batista that was more of an assault, and it saw him instantly red-carded. Four years later Maradona’s sneaky ‘Hand of God’ ensured that England were knocked out of the tournament, while in the 1994 World Cup the Argentine’s glorious comeback was tarnished by a failed drugs test.