28/10/2001 Derby County 1 Chelsea 1

Chelsea's Marcel Desailly has taunted Fabrizio Ravanelli, 
asking if the Derby striker insulted him throughout Sunday's 
fiery Barclaycard Premiership match due to his inability to 
win a place in the Italian national team, or because of his 
country's defeat by France in the Euro 2000 final.


French international Desailly stepped up the row - which 
started on the Pride Park pitch and continued with a furious 
confrontation as he boarded the Blues team coach - claiming 
Ravanelli lost his cool and dished out abuse because of his 
and Italy's failures.


The feuding pair were lucky to stay on the pitch and 
escaping with just a booking apiece after raising their hands 
and shoving each other during the 1-1 draw.


Desailly said on Monday: ``I had a small altercation with 
Ravanelli, during and after the match - and his attitude 
during the encounter was frankly inexplicable.


``Is this due to the fact that he has not been selected 
more for the Italian team? Or maybe he has not digested the 
defeat of Italy by France in final of Euro 2000?

``During the match, he insulted me 150,000 times, always 
with the same words. I will save you from the details. I do 
not really understand the reasons why he got so excited.''

He added, on marcel-desailly.com: ``He was very aggressive 
and it finished with him getting on my nerves - which is very 
rare, because I am usually a very calm person. All that is 
really inexplicable for me.'' 

The two were later involved in an ugly tunnel bust-up as 
their on-the-pitch feud boiled over after the game.

Ravanelli had been incensed by the actions of Desailly 
during the 1-1 draw and waited at the top of the tunnel to 
confront the French international after the game.

A flashpoint looked to have been avoided as Desailly went 
to applaud the travelling Chelsea fans.

But Ravanelli, scorer of Derby's goal, was still upset and 
later went to stand in the vicinity of the visitors' dressing 
room to wait for Desailly to emerge.

Both players were then surrounded by masses of stewards and 
security officials and Desailly then had to be restrained as 
he turned back and began shouting loudly and tried to confront 
Ravanelli.

He began gesturing angrily and forcibly towards the former 
Juventus and Middlesbrough star before Desailly was then 
shepherded away in the direction of the team coach.

Now it remains to be seen if further action will be taken 
over the incident, depending on whether it has been mentioned 
by referee Steve Bennett in his report.