Liverpool Football Club News

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Bellamy: I lost control

02 Mar 2007 - 08:01:56

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Liverpool striker Craig Bellamy has admitted that he finds it difficult to avoid controversy off the pitch and has explained the reasons for the recent incident that led to him threatening John Arne Riise with a golf club.

The Wales international's career has been blighted by a series of high-profile problems, culminating in his notorious clash with Riise during a recent team-bonding exercise on the Algarve.

"It started when we were all doing a bit of karaoke," Bellamy told The Daily Mirror.

"I only sang one song and that was Red, Red Wine by UB40. That was because Jerzy Dudek was drinking it. That's how silly it all was.

"A lot of the other lads wanted Riise to get up there next because he hadn't turned up at the dinner earlier and I tried to get him up, too.

"I wasn't that bothered whether he wanted to sing or not so I sat back down, but he wasn't too happy about me trying to get him to sing so he let me know about it.

"The situation was calmed down then but when I was walking back to the hotel with Steve Finnan, who I was rooming with, I lost control for a few seconds.

"I went and confronted Ginger (Riise) and I said to him 'don't be doing that in front of the players again'.

"And that was really about it. I didn't want to cause a scene in front of everybody else. I just wanted to talk to him about it alone.

"But you know, John's been great about it, really. Straight away the next morning, we were training together. There's no problem now.

"I've got the bad boy tag and some of it's justified. But some of it's exaggerated, too."