Jamie Carragher and Alvaro Arbeloa were teammates for two and a half seasons at Liverpool, and the pair famously clashed on Arbeloa's last appearance for the club
19:46, 22 Jan 2026
Jamie Carragher revealed an old story about Alvaro Arbeloa
Jamie Carragher revealed an old story about Alvaro Arbeloa(Image: CBS Sports)
Jamie Carragher joked about how he had to "rein in" Alvaro Arbeloa during the pair's time together at Liverpool.
Arbeloa spent two and a half seasons at Anfield, and in the Spaniard's final appearance for the club, he was involved in an altercation with Jamie Carragher.
Liverpool was playing West Bromwich Albion at The Hawthorns when Carragher and Arbeloa squared up, and the footage was shown to Carragher on CBS Sports this week in the wake of Arbeloa being appointed Real Madrid manager following Xabi Alonso's exit last week.
At first, Carragher joked about what the altercation was about, saying: “I was just saying, ‘If you even dare to take that job off Xabi Alonso’, and Xabi’s saying, ‘don’t worry about it, they’re all the prima donnas, I don’t want the job!'”
READ MORE: Sadio Mane could prove crucial to Mohamed Salah future after Liverpool transfer responseREAD MORE: Liverpool has new coach on Arne Slot bench after Dominik Szoboszlai admission
Confirming the real reason behind the confrontation, Carragher said: "We needed to keep a clean sheet there to make sure we got the most clean sheets in the season. Listen, he was a good player, Arbeloa, he wasn’t a great player, he was a good player. And he started thinking he was a great player. So I just needed to rein him back in a little bit. He was attacking too much.
“He just didn’t want to defend. And that was his job. Just defend. And we get our clean sheet. And I think we won 2-0 that day against West Brom, we got the golden gloves, for Pepe Reina.”
Arbeloa replaced Alonso as Madrid manager after the former Liverpool midfielder was fired last Monday, despite boasting a 70% win percentage across his short spell in charge.
Content cannot be displayed without consent
Carragher believes that leaving Madrid will be a good thing for Alonso in the long run.
Article continues below
"I actually think it's probably better for Xabi that's he out to be honest, because he went in with an idea and it quickly became apparent that he wasn't going to be allowed to coach the way he wanted to or set up the team the way he wanted to," he said.
"There were obviously problems with certain players who didn't want to buy into that idea. So I actually think it was better for him, because even if he'd have had success – or the season had gone on and he'd have won the title – deep down he would have known 'this is not my way, this is not the way I want to do things, I've not been brought in to coach Real Madrid like this'.
"So I think it's probably better for him to get out of there really. There was obviously a situation where they said they wanted a coach – but they need a manager, not a coach."