Ranked! The 50 most hated people in football

Mixed in withthe cheats, chancers and chairmen that make up this list, there's a big dollop of pure, unadulterated envy. Yep, while every entry in our countdown of 50 most hated people in football have drawn major dislike for a variety of reasons, some of them are also loved in equal measure.This isn’t a list of people we here at FFT personally hate - although some of the people here are definitelyoff our Christmas card list- but rather who stir up opprobrium in the game.So what we’re saying is: don’t blame us if yourfavourite icon whose face you have tattooed on your thigh is here (although it would be a pretty strange person to have Mike Dean inked on their leg). We’re just trying to hold up a mirror to the football world.That said, if we’ve put anyone here who shouldn’t be present - or if we’ve missed out someone widely reviled - do let us know (nicely) @FourFourTwo. For now, let’s bring on the hateby continuing with positions 30-21. Come back throughout the week as we finish the countdown...50-41 • 40-31•30-2150. Sergio RamosOpen a dictionary at the entry for ‘pantomime villain’, and the definition might simply be a picture of Sergio Ramos, perhaps waving an imaginary yellow card at a browbeaten referee. Ramos holds the record for the joint-most sendings off of any La Liga playerever, but he’s a strange kind of hard man in that he is impossible to take seriously.Rather than a chilling defensive gatekeeper, the Real Madrid defender’s persona is more defined by a kind of larger-than-life recklessness;a shameless supervillain. You could say that Ramos – good looking, cartoonishly ludicrous, lacking any self-awareness and amassing trophies on behalf of a super-rich juggernaut – is the defining footballer of the modern age.Words:Alex Hess49.Alan PardewHis public personality straddles the line between smug and sleazy – it’s probably encapsulated by the nauseating touchline dance when Crystal Palace went ahead in the 2016 FA Cup Final, which did achieve the impressive feat of getting neutrals to back Manchester United.There’s a thin veneer of respectability, but like a dry-lipped Bruce Banner, Pardew also has a nasty streak that occasionally bursts out - from calling Manuel Pellegrini a "f***ng old c***"to head-butting an opposing player on the touchline.Despite a middling managerial career, he carries a sense of superiority that’s best evidenced by what West Ham fans call the ‘king story’.Words:Amit Kawala48. Robbie SavageA media career which mimics who he was as a player. Robbie Savage, the combative, provocative player became ‘Sav’, the opinion-on-absolutely-everything pundit.To give Savage his dues, he was really just an early exponent of something which many of his contemporaries have recently caught up with - i.e. he who shouts loudest and most antagonistically, wins. We’re looking at you, Chris Sutton.He’s also been very successful and until quite recently, straddled nearly half a dozen radio and television channels, appearingin all sorts of different formats. The irritating talking head who proves the old maxim: it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.Words:Seb Stafford-Bloor47. Tony PulisUntil recently, it had been largely opposition fans that resented Tony Pulis's signature – and wholly unapologetic – sit-and-stifle blueprint. Although it’s increasingly nowfans of the clubs he manages too. Just as sure as Wales' foremost excitement-extinguisher will always have his admirers among those who prize mid-table security, he will always face seething opprobrium from the more aesthetically minded among his spectatorship.Pulis has been scorned by many a snookered manager in his time but none more frequently or indignantly than Arsene Wenger, who has variously labelled Pulis's team "cowards", "horrendous" and practitioners of"more rugby than football".Also allegedly head-butted his own striker while wearing nothing but a scowl once – an image to give us all nightmares.Words: Alex Hess46. PepePortugal’s master of the dark arts is – to English eyes at least – everything that’s wrong with football. He has all the attributes to be a legendary defender – pace, bravery, strength and intelligence – and, after a decade at Real Madrid, the trophy cabinet to match. But it’s the manner in which he’s used his talents that attracts the ire.Like his long-time defensive partner Ramos, Pepe a is dirty, dastardly and downright infuriating player – the kind who will pull the shirt off your back when he’s defending a corner, and then collapse like a house of cards if you give him the same treatment at the other end.Words: Amit Kawala45. Alan GreenPoor Alan Green. He’s disliked for being everything that a football commentator is supposed to be.Today’s equivalent is a slave to the sound bite and, more often than not, gratingly optimistic at every turn. In contrast, Green is gloriously dour; every game he covered - and continues to cover - presents an opportunity for a good ol’ moan.To a particular type of unstable, fundamentalist fanhe was prone to moments of bias, but his real crime was likely that his presence - his voice, his tone, his demeanour - made any game sound like an attritional battle in the mud. The marmite of British commentary.Words: Seb Stafford-Bloor44. Stan KroenkeA man whose bank balance soars thanks to a team that meekly treads water is never going to be worshipped by that club's fans -and so it has proved with the American sports tycoon, for whom the tide of public opinion appears to have been fiercely turning over recent months.“We don’t want his sort,” was the response of Arsenal's former chairman Peter Hill-Wood when Kroenke first showed up on the scene. That was in 2007, when Kroenke began amassing shares for£7,500.Adecade on, with the American having invested precisely zero of his own money in a team that had long been drifting towards irrelevance, he was turning down offers of £32,000 per share. Good work if you can get it.Words:Alex Hess43. Ben ThatcherOnce is an accident. Twice is coincidence. But unfortunately for a player whose elbowing controversies numbered at least three during a red-and-yellow-flecked 18-year career, thrice is very much a trend.Thatcher gained notoriety in 2006 when his ostensible attempt to dispossess Pedro Mendes resulted in his forearm bludgeoning the face of his opponent, who was rushed to hospital having suffered a pitchside seizure. The level of brutality was so severe that Greater Manchester police were compelled to launch an investigation – just as Lancashire police had looked into a similar ‘challenge’ during a reserve game that February.Six years earlier, in his final year at Wimbledon, Thatcher had dished out the same treatment to Sunderland’s Nicky Summerbee – a moment that persuaded the onlooking Kevin Keegan against selecting him, as planned, for his upcoming England squad. Thatcher would go on to represent Wales, despite having played for England at U21 level (four appearances, one red card).Words:Alex Hess42. Neil WarnockTo catalogue his fall-outs would take more than the allottedspace here, but suffice to say the aptly anagrammed managerial veteran has his fair share of enemies. The sheer range of this roll call – from the widely loathed (El Hadji Diouf, Stephen Hunt) to the inoffensive (Gareth Southgate) to the downright bizarre (Sean Bean) – is testament to Warnock's status as a man who could not so much start a fight in a phonebox as inspire a Royal Rumble in one...before complaining about the outcome in the press.His position as a protagonist in the fabled Battle of Bramall Lane (three red cards, two 22-man melees, one abandoned game) makes for an apt top spot on Colin Wanker’s greatest hits compilation.Words:Alex Hess41. Sergio BusquetsThe iron fist inside the velvet glove. Busquets is a fabulous player, that’s not in dispute - he might even be underrated. Buthe lacks the sheen of many of his team-mates and the perception of him as the physicality behind Barcelona’s grace, hopelessly reductive though it is, makeshim the hateable face of his club.Few dislikeMessi and only a philistine would object to Iniesta, so what are you left with? Who provided the outlet for the world’s seething jealousy? The big, awkward looking guy in the middle, of course, with his fondness for theatrics and dalliances with the dark arts.Words: Seb Stafford-Bloor50-41 •40-31 • 30-2140.Steve EvansFor the casual, Premier League-focused fan, Steve Evans just seems like your average, run-of-the-mill Football League manager – overweight, and somehow both red-faced and pasty simultaneously.Yet Evans has a reputation as one of the most hated managers in lower-league football, from spells at Boston, Crawley, Rotherham, Leeds and now Mansfield.Although touchline disasters and cosying up to Massimo Cellino at Leeds are on his rap sheet, the hatred for Evans originally stems from his conviction for tax fraud (actual evasion, not just good old avoision):during his time at Boston, player bonuses and wages were disguised as expenses to help the Lincolnshire club win promotion to the Football League.Words:Amit Kawala39.Vincent TanIn our eyes, his biggest crime is wearing a football shirt over a normal shirt (and under a suit jacket). Yet Cardiff City fans have bigger gripes. When Malaysian billionaire Tan took over the Welsh club in 2010, they’d just missed out on Premier League promotion.Although his investment helped the Bluebirds attain that prize, it came at a cost. Despite overwhelming opposition from fans, Tan pushed through a rebrand from the City’s traditional blue to a red hue favoured in Asia. The change lasted just three years, but Tan’s total disregard for a club’s tradition won him no friends in south Wales. Words:Amit Kawala38. Vinnie JonesIn the 1980s and 1990s, Jones was the tough-tackling, ball-grabbing face of Wimbledon’s Crazy Gang, and a self-confessed ‘Soccer Hard Man’ who was fined by the FA for appearing in a video of that name.He was sent off a troubling 12 times during his career, and typifies the overblown machismo of ‘Danny Dyer football’ – an aesthetic that’s carried over seamlessly into his Hollywood career (he turned down a role in Snakes on a Plane, which is a good enough reason for hate in itself).It would be interesting to drop Crazy Gang era Vinnie Jones into a flowing game of modern Premier League football and see how long he lasted before being dragged off the pitch by stewards with Theo Walcott’s blood all over his face.Words:Amit Kawala37.Roberto RojasIn September 1989, a promising Chile side were losing to Brazil in a crucial qualifier, and on the verge of missing out on the World Cup. Then, 65 minutes in, a flare thrown from the stands seemed to hit their goalkeeper Roberto Rojas, who went down bleeding from a head wound. The match was called off, and Brazil’s place seem threatened.Yet it turned out that viewers had been duped. Rojas the rotter had cut his own head, with a blade hidden in his glove – a plan devised alongside captain Fernando Astengo. The flare hadn’t landed anywhere near him.“We thought the plan had worked. With all the pressure and Chile wanting so badly to win, I really didn’t think I had done anything wrong at the time,” he said. Rojas was banned from football for life.Words:Amit Kawala36. John FashanuIt’s fair to say that Wimbledon’s Crazy Gang, whose piece de resistance FA Cup win against Liverpool came after their captain had threatened to rip off Kenny Dalglish’s ear in the tunnel, did not expend much energy striving for popularity. However, Fash the Bash’s dubious profile is the product of more than just his on-pitch unpleasantries (which in itself included shattering Gary Mabbutt’s eye socket with his elbow).His involvement alongside Bruce Grobbelaar and Hans Segers in a high-profile match-fixing scandal (all were eventually cleared)muddied his name, but it was his public ostracisation of his brother –the openly gay footballer Justin –which has left the most toxic legacy.Words:Alex Hess35. Graham WestleyGiven the shadow cast by the Premier League, it’s remarkable that Westley – who has never coached above League One – has the reputation that he does. Or maybe it’s telling.He’s managed 11 clubs in 20 years, including three separate spells at Stevenage, and has evidently always had the capacity to put noses out of joint. Note, for instance, how many times Westley seems to have left clubs in a backdraft of acrimony and how often personal disputes, supporter fallout, or personality clashes seem to have been responsible.Perhaps Westley can be summed up in one quote, a magical mixture of arrogance and nonsense: “My kids don’t call me Dad,” he once said. “They call me Medal Winner.”Words:Seb Stafford-Bloor34.Antonio RattinThe foul-mouthed Argentina captain during the 1966 World Cup was sent off by the German referee after 35 minutes of their quarter-final against England for “violence of the tongue”. But then, believing the referee to be biased, he refused to leave the field, sat down on the red carpet reserved for royals and (gasp) insulted the Queen.Eventually, Rattin had to be led from the field by two police officers. It made him football’s top villain of the 1960s on these shores.Yet in South America, this incident was viewed as an injustice against the Argentines – with fans pointing out that the referee spoke no Spanish, so couldn’t have known what Rattin was saying to him.Words:Amit Kawala33.Tim SherwoodSherwood’s managerial career started right at the top, and burned hot and bright – like an asteroid smashing into the ground. He joined Tottenham under Harry Redknapp, performed well with the U21s, and was took the senior reins in December 2013 after the departure of Andre Villas-Boas.It was an abrupt change. From a thoughtful, tactical manager, Spurs were now being steered by a gilet-hurling, chest-thumping manager driven by “passion”. The results weren’t actually that bad, but a spell at Aston Villa ended in relegation and the anger stopped getting results, while his bullish attempts to take credit for Harry Kane come across as a bit desperate. Also, his arms must be really cold.Words:Amit Kawala32. Mark van BommelAlthough the Dutch midfielder’s reputation was crystalised in the 2010 World Cup Final – a one-match campaign to obtain a red card that Howard Webb manfully ignored – Van Bommel’s villainy is really a body of work.Just as it has become fashionable to refer to rudimentary playing positions by their Italian or Spanish equivalent, it’s a surprise that nobody has coined a phrase for his role. A lover of yellow-cards, a purveyor of tactical fouls (which seemed often – amazingly – to go unpunished). Basterde, perhaps?Van Bommel was also an awfully good player, which – in that Steffen Effenberg sort of way – somehow made it worse.Words:Seb Stafford-Bloor31. Francesco BecchettiIn the summer of 2014, whenFrancesco Becchetti's waste management consortium took over Leyton Orient, only a penalty shoot-out had denied the club a place in the Championship.When the Italian left Brisbane Road three years later, Orient were a non-League club for the first time in 112 years, had gone through 10 managers and were on the brink of existential obliteration. After two relegations, one failed reality TV show, one winding-up order from the high court, a money laundering investigation and a six-match ban from his own stadium for kicking the Orient manager, he was finally hounded out.But the damage – calamitous in scale – was well and truly done. "This is a position from which it can grow," he said upon departing the National League club.Words:Alex Hess50-41 •40-31•30-2130. Alex FergusonThe most successful manager in British football history stands as fairly sound proof that the surest way to foster resentment from all angles is to win everything in sight. But barbarity begins at home, and to that end Ferguson was never shy of going to town on his own players, with Paul Ince, Peter Schmeichel, Jaap Stam, David Beckham, Roy Keane and Wayne Rooney among the United stalwarts who fought losing battles against Old Trafford’s in-house follicle restylist.Further afield there were journalists (“f***ing idiots”), the Old Trafford crowd (“like a funeral”), Man City (“noisy neighbours”), Newcastle (“a wee club in the north-east”), Italians (“inventors of the smokescreen”), Germans ("typical Germans")and “Real Madrid (“wouldn’t sell that mob a virus”).Plus, of course, the various stages of his career were characterised as much by managerial feuds – most notably with Kevin Keegan, Arsene Wenger and Rafa Benitez – as they were by teams or trophies.Words:Alex Hess29. Mike DeanReferees, it’s fair to say, are never on the fast track to public favour. Such is the nature of a job that involves implementing even the most pedantic of rules within a ragingly tribal bloodsport.But it's the ones who seem to savour every last second of their role of jobsworth-in-chief that, fairly or not, really tend to rile the onlookers.Mike Dean is one such man: never knowingly under-flourishing a card or downplaying a telling-off, his signature self-congratulatoryflamboyance has quickly passed from annoying quirk to full-blown internet sensation.Words:Alex Hess28.Joe KinnearSearching for a low point of Mike Ashley’s time as Newcastle owner is a full-time job, but his dealings with Joe Kinnear sit high on the list. Ex-Wimbledon boss Kinnear was originally appointed as Magpies manager in September 2008 – andwas soon letting loose an expletive-filled rant in which he swore 52 times and called the Daily Mirror’s Simon Bird a c**t.When he was brought back in as director of football in 2013, there was outrage. Fans threatened a boycott as, in a bizarre radio interview, he insulted the intelligence of Newcastle fans and mispronounced the names of several players (Yohan Kebab, anyone?). He failed to make a single permanent signing during his tenure.Words:Amit Kawala27. Silvio BerlusconiIn human terms, the ex-Italian prime minister, bunga bunga veteran and former Milan chairman has [deep breath] been on trial for paying for sex with an underage prostitute, been convicted of tax fraud, been sentenced for accounting fraud and been involved in trials alleging abuseof office, defamation, extortion, perjury, mafia collusion,falseaccounting,embezzlement,money laundering, witness tampering, corruption andbriberyofpolice officers, judges and politicians.In football terms, his three-decade chairmanship of Milan turned them into the world’s first modern superclub, built on TV money, on-brand PR and the capacity to go through managers like there’s no tomorrow. In short: a man very much at home at the executive table of modern football.Words:Alex Hess26. Dennis WiseChelsea’s horrible little Napoleon. Had it not been for inconveniences like his personality and distaste for taxi drivers, the world might remember that Dennis Wise could absolutely play. He was one of the few English players to survive the influx of foreign (better) players at Stamford Bridge and his set-piece delivery was as good as anything in the league during the 1990s.Alas, that hardly seems the point. To most, he remains the yappy attack dog who would stud an opponent’s ankle before hiding behind one of his centre-halves, and later broke a team-mate's jawbone on a pre-season tour after a game of cards turned sour (then called his sacking by Leicester "a disgrace").Bonus point: he also managed to be part of Mike Ashley’s loathed “Cockney Mafia” in Newcastle after his retirement as a player.Words:Seb Stafford-Bloor25.Roman AbramovichDo you remember the good old days, when the Premier League couldn’t just be bought by the club with the deepest pockets? No, us neither.But there was a definite step change when Roman Abramovich’s billions swept into Stamford Bridge. Whatever the Russian’s motivations – and you suspect they had more to do with politics than football – his impact on the Premier League has been undeniable.
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Chelsea went from also-rans to a trophy-winning machine, and it paved the way for a series of big-money takeovers – most notably at Manchester City.Abramovich changed English football, but maybe not for the best.Words:Amit Kawala24. Kevin MuscatOnce voted football’s dirtiest ever player, Kevin Muscat spent a career honing his reputation as a hot-headed endangerment to his peers with a litany of shocking tackles. One, on Charlton’s Matty Holmes, left his opponent unable to play again (Holmes was initially told his leg, broken in four places, may need to be amputated).One tackle that maimed Christophe Dugarry was branded an “act of brutality” by France manager Roger Lemerre. Another, which injured Craig Bellamy, earned him a revenge-stamp from a former team-mate of Bellamy’s five years later.His most virally notorious act of savagery, performed during his first A-League match back from a suspension in 2011, was a tackle on the winger Adrian Zahra that got him an eight-match ban.These are merely the lowlights of a bulging portfolio.Words:Alex Hess23. Richard ScudamoreThe CEO of the self-styled best league in the world has a broad remit, but he is essentially in charge of the Premier League's commercial operation. Which is to say he's a busy man – and, on the face of it, a very successful one. At least in monetary terms.The currencyhe's raked in on behalf of England's top flight – through sponsorship deals, broadcastingrights and various other deal-brokering – hasn't been readily converted into public goodwill, largely because the dollar-signs-in-eyes approach to his job has resulted in such fan-friendlyideas as staging a 39th fixture overseas.His role as a chief enforcer of regulations around third-party agents' rights, financial fair play and fit-and-proper ownership would also seem to stand in opposition to his interest in filling the division's coffers. If it isa conflict of interests, then, with the Premier League currently standing as the richest league in the worldif not the best –you don't have to be Magnum PI to figure out which sideScudamoreis broadly percieved to come down on.Words:Alex Hess22. Graeme SounessThe former Liverpool player has attracted a reasonable amount of ire on these shores, partly for his punditry, but mainly for his performances as a player.Although he played in an age of combative midfielders, Souness seemed to approach winning the “ball” like a Game of Thrones character going in for the kill: one hefty thwack, and then a pause to wipe the blood out of their facial hair.The Scot is particularly loathed by fans of Turkish club Fenerbahce, for an incident in 1996 when – as Galatasaray manager – Souness planted his side’s flag in the middle of their rivals pitch. “If he’d done the same thing now, he’d go back to England in a wooden box,” says one fan in arecent documentary. Words:Amit Kawala21. Andoni Goikoetxea“I just felt the impact, heard the sound – like a piece of wood cracking,” recalled Diego Maradona of the moment that earned the Butcher of Bilbao his epithet.Already renowned for his scandalous tackling having left Barcelona’s Bernd Schuster incapacitated for nine months with shredded knee ligaments the previous season, Athletic Club’s towering centre-half zeroed in on Schusters’ team-mate in 1983 for one of the most notorious tackles in football history.Maradona ankle was shattered, and legend has it that Goikoetxa still keeps the boot that made the tackle in a glass case in his living room. The following year enmities were renewed in the Spanish Cup final, which climaxed with one of the most staggeringly violent on-pitch brawls ever seen.Words:Alex HessFourFourTwo's most hated people in football: 20 to No.1 will be here this weekNow read...Ranked! The 30 most hated ever teams in British football10 of football's most spectacular (and often awful) debutsNo, seriously: what the heck is expected goals (xG)?New features you'd love on FourFourTwo.com