A FOOTBALL match plunged into madness when a player slapped his OWN team-mate in the face.
Sakaryaspor visited Pendikspor in the Turkish second division on Thursday at the Pendik Stadium for a league game.
The hosts picked up a comfortable 4-1 victory, but it was the visitors who made the headlines.
Sakaryaspor aces Caner Erkin and Burak Altıparmak butted heads on 76 minutes.
Their team-mates watched in shock and tried to intervene to defuse the situation.
However, Erkin, 36, did the unthinkable as he went on to slap Altıparmak, 34.
The referee witnessed the incident and immediately showed the perpetrator a straight red card.
Sakaryaspor decided the next day to immediately ban both players indefinitely.
Altiparmak issued the following statement: “First of all, I would like to state that, the incident in the Pendikspor match deeply saddened us all.
“However, in the latest statements made in the public, the course of the event does not accurately reflect the truth.
“The first swearing and disrespectful behavior came from the other side, not from me.
“Other players who were with us at that moment are also witnessing this situation.
“Although Caner Erkin came to my room the day after the match and apologised to me and my family, I do not accept that he targeted me in his statement today.
“At this point, what is important to me is the integrity and success of Sakaryaspor.
“I hope that the incident will be closed in a way that will not harm the team before it is further magnified.”
This is not the first time team-mates have turned on each other on the pitch during a match.
Last season Manchester United team-mates Rasmus Hojlund and Amad Diallo had a furious row after full-time at Viktoria Plzen in the Europa League.
Past team-mate bust-ups
Back in January, Ben White and Oleksandr Zinchenko had to be held back by set-piece coach Nicolas Jover following Arsenal’s 2-1 win over Nottingham Forest.
At the beginning of the 2019-2020 season, Aston Villa’s Tyrone Mings and Anwar El-Ghazi locked horns during a game against West Ham.
One of the most infamous team-mate bust-ups took place in 1995 when Blackburn Rovers team-mates David Batty and Graeme Le Saux accidentally collided when going for the ball against Spartak Moscow.
The game was just four minutes in when Le Saux aimed a punch at Batty and broke his hand – Tim Sherwood stepped in to separate them.
Tottenham team-mates Hugo Lloris and Son Heung-min got particularly aggy at half-time in the 1-0 loss to Everton five years ago and almost came to blows in the dressing room.
And who could ever forget Lee Bowyer’s scrap with Kieron Dyer during Newcastle’s loss to Aston Villa in 2005?
Dyer reportedly called Magpies team-mate Bowyer “s***” and an outrageous melee took place that saw players from both sides try to intervene as they ripped each other to shreds.
They were sent off and tried to get at each other in the changing room but stopped when then manager Graeme Souness allegedly offered to fight them both.
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