Kieran Dyer has detailed an altercation between Duncan Ferguson and Alessandro Pistone as the players, who both represented Everton during their careers, played together at Newcastle United
Kieran Dyer declared Everton icon Duncan Ferguson “the hardest man in football” as he lifted the lid on a training ground bust up between the striker and another former Blue.
Ferguson’s time at Newcastle United coincided with Dyer’s and full back Alessandro Pistone, who would later go on to play at Goodison Park.
While Ferguson and Pistone were in the north east together they had an altercation Dyer said remained with him to this day.
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Reliving the incident on an episode of the Open Goal Podcast released this week, the former England midfielder said of Ferguson: “I always say he is the hardest man in football. One day you could talk to him for an hour and the next day you wouldn’t get two words out of Dunc. I saw him lose it a couple of times.”
Detailing one occasion when Ferguson, whose managerial career has recently seen him leave Inverness Caledonian Thistle after working for free while attempting to steward the Scottish club through a financial crisis, Dyer said: “We were playing a 5-a-side and his team was losing. He’s got Pistone in his team and he must say something like: ‘Pistone stop giving the ball away.’ Pistone has gone ‘f*** you Dunc’ or something.
“There were two or three minutes of the game to go and as the game is going on Dunc is not moving he is just following Pistone everywhere. Pistone hasn’t noticed but he is not taking his eyes off him.
“This goes on for two minutes. Straight after training I’ve gone in the physio room to take off some strapping. Pistone came in because he always had strapping. He’s on one bed, I’m on the other bed. All of a sudden the door gets kicked open and he [Ferguson] is like ‘you outside’. Pistone starts to cry ‘no Dunc, no Dunc’… [and Ferguson responded] ‘I just said outside now’.
“[Pistone is] like ‘no Dunc’ and he said: ‘I will tell you one more time, outside now or I will fill you in now.’ ‘Please don’t’ – so now [Pistone] is literally pleading for his life crying. I will never forget it. Dunc says: ‘Alright, I will give you this one. But if you ever tell me to f*** off again I will crack your skull open.’ And he just walked out. That was the scariest, most menacing thing.”
