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Football may have its late hits – and hockey has out-and-out fights on the ice – but soccer is not a lightweight sport in comparison. We may hear more about the silky skills of players like Ronaldo and Messi, but there are even more tough guys around the world that like nothing better than stopping those GOATs in their tracks.
Not all of the players in our list will have featured in many of the big event markets on the gambling sites at VegasBetting.com, but they all played an important role for their teams down through the years. Some of these have retired from the dark arts now, but they can all claim to be one of the dirtiest soccer players that ever set foot on a field.
Vinnie Jones
Now better known for his many hard man roles in Hollywood action movies, Vinnie Jones was originally a real hard man on the field. He was regarded as a very physical and aggressive player who played in the top tier of English soccer and even internationally for Wales.
Jones still holds the record for the fastest-ever yellow card in a game, receiving a warning after just three seconds in an FA Cup game in 1992. He also had a number of run-ins with the law during and after his career. But he summed up perfectly the persona of his most famous team, Wimbledon – known as ‘The Crazy Gang’.
Gerardo Bedoya
When your nickname is ‘The Beast’, there is a good possibility that you are a fairly aggressive player. That was certainly the case with Gerardo Bedoya, the Colombian international who holds the record for the most red cards received by any player in the history of the game.
During one Bogota derby between Santa Fe and Millonarios in 2012 he was sent off for violent play and was handed a 15-game suspension. He retired from playing in 2015 but went into coaching where he was promptly dismissed from the dugout 21 minutes into his first game.
Sergio Ramos
All of our dirty players here have actually tasted success as well as becoming infamous. But none have achieved quite as much as Sergio Ramos. Even with his aggressive nature, he is regarded as one of the greatest defenders of all time and has won a World Cup, European Championships, as well as countless domestic honors.
A player that actively seeks confrontation, Ramos holds the record for the most cards of any player in the Spanish league, as well as for his national team. He is an expert set-piece player as well though and has regularly taken penalties for his teams. He now plays in Paris and is terrorizing French players in the latest stage of his career.
Luis Suarez
Now nearing the end of his career in Brazil, Luis Suarez has won trophies all over the world and is particularly well known for the goals he scored for Liverpool and Barcelona. He is also one of the greatest ever Uruguayan players and has scored over 500 career goals for club and country.
But he will always also be remembered for his dramatic diving to win free kicks and for one particular game at the World Cup in Brazil in 2014. He was caught biting Italy defender Giorgio Chiellini and was banned for four months. He has also bitten opponents in the EPL and when he was playing club soccer in the Netherlands.
Marco Materazzi
For many years Italian defenders were seen as the masters of the dark arts of aggressive and downright dirty soccer. That was probably an unfair view of the talent of some of the ultra-defenders of the 1970s and 80s – and Materazzi was an extremely effective tough-tackling defender.
But he will forever be known as the player whose antics got Zinedine Zidane sent off in his last-ever game – and in the World Cup final no less. Materazzi trash-talked the French ace so much that he provoked him into a head-butt. Italy then went on to win the title on penalties, making Materazzi’s work the ultimate dirty trick.
