Liverpool stars in booze shame
By DANIEL KING - More by this author » Last updated at 21:15pm on 17th February 2007
Liverpool stars are alleged to have gone on an alcohol-fuelled rampage during a training camp last week in Portugal.
Goalkeeper Jerzy Dudek, Jermaine Pennant and former England striker Robbie Fowler were named by local newspapers as being involved in a drunken spree at the Barringtons Golf and Health Club, in Vale do Lobo, on the Algarve, in the early hours of Friday morning.
Dudek, a hero of Liverpool’s Champions League triumph in Istanbul two years ago,was reported to have been handcuffed after the incident, which is alleged to have occurred at the end of a warm-weather training camp undertaken to prepare for Liverpool’s Champions League game in Barcelona on Wednesday.
A Liverpool spokesman said last night: "The matter will be dealt with internally."
The future of all three players will be in doubt if the allegations are shown to be true. But Pennant, whose troubled past includes a spell in prison for drunken driving, has the most to lose, with veterans Dudek and Fowler already likely to be leaving the club at the end of the season.
Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez was in nearby Vilamoura at the time of the alleged trouble. He will be disappointed with the claims against Pennant after he gave the player a chance to resurrect his top-flight career by signing him for £6million from Birmingham last summer.
The allegations will also make waves across the Atlantic, where the club’s new American owners, George Gillett Jnr and Thomas Hicks, are unlikely to be impressed at the tarnishing of Liverpool’s reputation on the eve of the next formal stage of their £450m takeover.
Local sources claim the trouble began at a bar called Monty’s, in Vale do Lobo, where about 15 members of the squad had gone for a drink after a team meal on the eve of their departure from Portugal.
After several rounds of beer, the party reportedly became rowdy and, despite the efforts of captain Steven Gerrard and England international Peter Crouch to defuse the situation, police were called.
Officers escorted the party back to Barringtons but trouble is said to have flared again. No one was arrested or charged but Dudek is alleged to have been restrained by police. It is understood that Barringtons reported only a broken glass and Liverpool are said to have agreed to pay for any damage.
The incident recalls the scandal of another sunshine trip by an English club, when a drunken night involving Leicester players in La Manga in 2004 ended in three of them being charged with sexual assault, a case which subsequently collapsed.
Although not as serious, the allegations against Liverpool could not have come at a more crucial time for the club.
Shareholders will receive a formal offer document in the morning from Kop Football Ltd, the Hicks/Gillett company bidding for the club.
Kop will then have a minimum of 21 days to agree a deal with the owners of 75 per cent of the shares, at which point they would be irreversibly committed to buying the club.
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