Ian Wright was one of the best goalscorers of his generation, but the Arsenal man wasn't fond of two things; goalkeepers who prevented him from adding to his goal tally, and strikers who found the net more often than him. This is what led the Arsenal icon to say he 'hated' two men in particular during his playing days.
Wright is now a well-respected pundit in the football world, and so are the two players he wasn't a fan of. One of these rivalries was born out of competitiveness, while the other was far more heated.
Firstly, Wright named the Premier League's all-time top goalscorer, Alan Shearer, as the first player he 'hated'. The sheer inevitability of a Shearer goal used to frustrate the ex-Gunners striker, who stated (per The Mirror): "Proud to call him my friend now... but when we were playing I hated him - simply because of his hunger to score goals on a weekly basis."
"You come in and you've scored two, Shearer scores three. If you scored two, Shearer scored one. If you score three, Shearer scores two.
"So you never catch up with him. And we're talking about someone who had three years out of the game with real bad injuries, and he's still got 260. He's still way out in front."
Wright then went on to praise the Newcastle hero - who he worked alongside on Match of the Day for many years - adding: "I'm not sure people realise the enormity of his achievement. He went to Newcastle because it's his hometown club - could have easily gone to Man Utd, won another seven or eight Premier Leagues... then probably globally he'd be even more revered."
Ian Wright vs Peter Schmeichel
The ex-striker admitted to being frustrated by the Dane's quality
Shearer wasn't the only player to irk Wright, as Peter Schmeichel had some well-documented battles with the England international. The Man United shot-stopper is one of the greatest in Premier League history and his incredible ability to keep the ball out of the net frustrated Wright, who claimed:
"We get on well, play golf together and laugh about the collisions we had. When we speak about it now, me and Schmeichel, we talk about how much I genuinely hated him as a goalkeeper.
"I knew how good he was and how hard it was to score against him. The only goals I ever scored against him were in friendlies."
The tension between the pair came to a head in a 1997 match between Arsenal and United. Wright recalled the incident and expressed the regret he now feels about the incident. He explained:
"We’d had a bit of an altercation at Old Trafford which led to this game, which was a couple of months later. The tackle which everybody sees, the whistle had already gone and I just didn’t stop.
"We’re both running for the ball, the red mist was there and I just jumped on the ball with two feet – they said it was the tackle that shamed football. When I look back at it now, it’s quite an embarrassing thing to see."
Schmeichel - who also had infamous issues with Roy Keane - is now seen regularly on CBS Sports' Champions League coverage, while Wright continues to appear on several football shows, most notably The Overlap alongside Keane and Gary Neville. All the bad blood appears to be behind the former players now that the dust has settled on their careers.
Statistics in this article courtesy of Tranfermarkt. Correct as of 10-12-24.