Football is an intense business and that intensity often boils over, leaving us fans with plenty of iconic and sometimes hilariously furious outbursts.
We kick start this list with a more recent one. Back in 2019, then Grimsby Town manager Michael Jolley was struggling to his side afloat in League Two and a 4-0 home defeat v Leyton Orient in October 2019 saw the Mariners slumped in 14th place of the table, after a promising start to the campaign under Jolley.
But it emerged the following month that, after that Orient defeat, Jolley has gone on what was described in national press as a’foul-mouth tirade’ in which he swore 58 times. The leaked recording was aimed at BBC Humberside and it supposedly played a part in his departure from the club in the December.
An except form that leaked recording read:
“You are an absolute f*cking disgrace of a journalist. The f*cking radio station gives us fucking no positive coverage whatsoever.”
Next up is Paolo Di Canio. He was in charge of Swindon Town between 2011 and 2013 and, in fairness, he was a decent manager for the club. He won more than half of his 95 games in charge but what may stick in the memory from his bizarre spell in charge of Swindon Town was his, let’s call it a ‘disagreement’, with Wes Foderingham.
Early on in the 2012/13 season, Foderingham was playing in goal for Swindon Town. But Di Canio brought him off the pitch after just 21 minutes of the game v Preston after conceding two early goals.
On his way off the pitch, Foderingham exchanged a few words with the fiery Italian who branded the now Sheffield United no.1 as ‘the worst professional’ he’d ever seen – more of Di Canio’s outburst can be seen here:
Tranmere Rovers boss Micky Mellon is another fiery character in the dugout. The Scot is now in his second spell in charge of the club and recently saw his side draw away at Sutton United, which saw his side miss out on a chance to move up into the automatic promotion spots of the League Two table.
And a stuttering reporter asked him whether or not it was ‘disappointing coming to a team who have perhaps got heads in a different place’ ahead of Sutton’s Papa John’s Final clash v Rotherham United earlier this month, to which Mellon replied at 3:30 minutes in…
From Mellon we come to John Yems. Another League Two manager, Yems has been in charge of Crawley Town since 2019 and he currently finds his side residing in the mid-table regions.
Now Yems is a manager so prone to an outburst that he actually has a number of compilation videos dedicated to some of his best outbursts, and some of his interviews this season have been dubbed ‘viral’.
After his side’s 2-1 defeat away at Stevenage back in January, he went on this epic rant:
https://twitter.com/edward_w97/status/1483742496559665159?s=20&t=3KBVeTw-nW0OGsYNDwRncg
And of course, no list like this would be complete without a touch of Warnock.
The recently-retired manager is perhaps our greatest produce in terms of managerial banter, though unfortunately for us, a lot of his tirades were in the Premier League, specifically when at Cardiff City.
He does of course boast the iconic ‘die to get three points’ line, and other notable ones from his Sheffield United days. But one memorable one from last season was his outburst after a Championship clash v Norwich City – and of course, it was directed towards the referee.
Enjoy the interview below:
